Chromium and Google API keys
[Posted October 16, 2013 by jake]
| From: |
| Ignacio Areta <ignacio-AT-planetmail.net> |
| To: |
| debian-legal-AT-lists.debian.org |
| Subject: |
| Chromium and Google API keys |
| Date: |
| Mon, 14 Oct 2013 00:57:23 +0000 (UTC) |
| Message-ID: |
| <1487455077.13798187.1381712243133.JavaMail.tomcat6@ibriss06.dlan.cinetic.de> |
| Archive‑link: | |
Article |
Hello list,
I'm not a Debian user, but probably this question is related to Debian too.
So, let's go to the story:
Recently I was doing some research to create a custom Chromium package, because at that time my
main distro (openSUSE) wasn't shipping a stable version of that and it was using the libxml from
system, which was causing some problems in the vBulletin forums.
When I looked to the specs of that package, I found this:
"# Set up Google API keys, see http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys
# Note: these are for the openSUSE Chromium builds ONLY. For your own distribution,
# please get your own set of keys."
And the API keys in question (lines 464-470)
https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/network:chro...
In the Arch's PKGBUILD, I found a similar warning (lines 48-54):
"# Google API keys (see http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys)
# Note: These are for Arch Linux use ONLY. For your own distribution, please
# get your own set of keys. Feel free to contact foutrelis@archlinux.org for
# more information."
https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree...
Also, the instructions to build Chromium states
"Before you build, you should also install API keys."
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxBuildInstruc...
Doing some research about this, I found this thread
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/ch...
And the terms of service of these APIs.
https://developers.google.com/terms/
And also, Debian is using these API keys (see lines 60-63)
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-chromium/pkg-chro...
So, my question is: is the API keys terms of service compatible with DFSG? Two parts of these terms
doesn't appears FOSS-friendly for me.
"You will not sublicense an API for use by a third party. Consequently, you will not create an API
Client that functions substantially the same as the APIs and offer it for use by third parties"
"You will not reverse engineer or attempt to extract the source code from any API or any related
software, except to the extent that this restriction is expressly prohibited by applicable law."
BTW, Chromium depends of these APIs to use some Google's services, like Google Sync. But (it seems)
Chromium can be compiled and used without these API keys too. What do you think about this?
Thanks for the attention,
Ignacio