Anaconda Threatens Legal Action Over Licensing Terms
- By Paul Mah
- August 21, 2024
Research and academic organizations that have used software made by Anaconda are being asked to pony up for licenses after using them for years under the impression that they are available at no cost.
This was reported by The Register, which spoke to a user from a medium-sized non-profit academic research institution that has received one such legal demand. The source claimed that universities and the research community were exempt until an update to the terms of service in March this year.
“We wish to inform you that, should this situation persist … our legal team may be compelled to consider measures aligned with our prevailing pricing and invoicing policies, which could include issuing back bills for any unauthorized or excess usage of Anaconda products,” said the note.
New licensing terms
Anaconda offers a distribution of popular data science tools and IDEs such as Jupyter Notebook and RStudio, with a curated set of open-source data science packages with scientific and academic applications.
The heart of the issue appears to be Anaconda’s changing licensing terms. While organizations with more than 200 employees need to purchase a license, the software is free to use for individuals and small businesses with fewer than 200 employees according to licensing terms from 2020.
It wasn’t clear then if universities and non-profit organizations were evaluated using the 200-person limit. However, wording that excluded non-government academic and non-profit organizations was quietly removed from the terms of service last year.
An update in March this year now specifies that both government and non-profit entities with over 200 employees or contractors must pay – and Anaconda is now in enforcement mode.
Ironically, the universities and non-profit organizations currently targeted are likely to have contributed substantially to the Anaconda ecosystem through its various code repositories.
Anaconda is also going after business users. As reported by Reuters, Anaconda has filed a lawsuit against chipmaker Intel for misusing its software for developing AI platforms. It is seeking an unspecified amount of monetary damages and for Intel to stop misusing Anaconda's software.
“Intel intentionally leveraged Anaconda's technological innovations to improve Intel's own products and establish its foothold in the now-booming artificial intelligence market,” Anaconda said in its lawsuit.
Image credit: iStock/Khanchit Khirisutchalual
Paul Mah
Paul Mah is the editor of DSAITrends, where he report on the latest developments in data science and AI. A former system administrator, programmer, and IT lecturer, he enjoys writing both code and prose.