Adobe RIAthon and why I chose not to participate …
Adobe India has been running a very interesting contest these past few months called RIAthon
The idea is simple, you build some cool RIAs using Adobe technologies and if Adobe likes your work they give you some very cool prizes and a platform to showcase your work and your skills.
I was quite excited about the contest at first .. I had even thought of an idea for an app I would build, but after very little exploration I decided not to participate. Now that the contest is well underway and this blog post cannot negatively affect Adobe’s efforts in anyway since the Grand Finale of the contest is tomorrow… I think its appropriate for me to express why I made my decision …
Quoting the RIAthon terms and conditions ….
“Each Contestant agrees that if his or her entry is selected as a Finalist entry, as a condition of receiving a prize, Contestant shall sign a license agreement granting to Adobe a royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to use, reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, modify for purposes of publicly performing and publicly displaying, and prepare derivative works based upon winner’s entry, for the purposes of advertising and promoting Adobe products, and for inclusion in and distribution with Adobe products.”
My interpretation of this legal gibberish was that if my entry gets selected as a Finalist I will have to give away all rights to my code to Adobe … I don’t see why I should have to do that … I know, Adobe is spending money on the prizes and the event but they are getting back developer excitement, adoption of their technology, cool examples to show and a whole lot of marketing .. I don’t see why they need to own my code. The obvious question in my head was …. if I spend a week or two building this thing will I still own the rights to monetize it? … and I asked the same on this Flex India thread … but with no response. I’m pretty sure I asked at one more place, but I cant remember where … well eventually my excitement died out and I decided I wont participate.
I wonder if there were others who went through the same thought process as me … I also wonder if the people who’ve participated have actually read the terms. Anyway, I look forward to seeing some of the cool stuff people have built tomorrow at Flash Ahead.
January 16th, 2009
Hi Mrinal, that is not my interpretation of that paragraph in the terms and conditions.
If you need to sign a license agreement that implies that you are the rights holder. Adobe seems to want to be in a position to be able to showcase your work, possibly use it in one of their products. The license you need to give to Adobe is non-exclusive.
I don’t see anywhere where it would restrict you from monetizing your own application.
January 16th, 2009
Peter,
You do have point … I’m fairly dense with legal language … but as you pointed out if the license is non-exclusive I guess contestants are still allowed to monetize their code.
Mrinal
January 16th, 2009
It would be great if every EULA, every FAQ had a comments section, so that such questions could be resolved directly.
(A phone call to the appropriate person at that local office might be the fastest way of getting clarification of an odd phrase… we in weblogs are practically prohibited from trying to translate a lawyer’s intent.)
jd/adobe
January 16th, 2009
Like John mentioned, we have been prohibited to discuss the T & C over email / public forums.
January 17th, 2009
I had the same reason for not participating in this contest. T & C are not clear or misinterpreted by me.
January 18th, 2009
[...] Adobe RIAthon and why I chose not to participateYeah, ganking the IP for your communities code isn't the way to go. [...]
January 18th, 2009
Follow up: When similar objectionable phrasing has been seen in EULAs in the past, it has been pretty simple to clear up… I’ve never seen any intent to appropriate people’s content. Lots of times text is just copied from license to license. Pursuing it through local contact, or through one of the blogs that announced the content, would be the fastest way to resolve such ambiguities.
jd/adobe