Andrew Clarke-161005 (5/30/2014)
Yes, you're right, it is definitely a mistake. As Gail has pointed out, it was done at a time when the site was suffering from the community's contributions being plagiarized by several sites. The wording was intended to allow us to take legal action against out-and-out plagiarists easily on behalf of the community, and the last thing on our minds was any desire to stop legitimate use of what the community has submitted. We're getting it changed as soon as we can find an acceptable wording. I would have written ‘You are not permitted to republish any of the Red Gate Materials for any purpose without explicit consent from the owners of the intellectual property’, but then I'm not a lawyer!In the meantime, if anyone needs an assurance about using any of the materials on the site for their work, then drop Steve, Tony or I an email.
I really appreciate the response and definitely think that they need to change the wording. Like I said, I really like this site and have learned a tremendous amount by coming here and would hate to see it hampered by a restrictive policy which seems at odds with the purpose of the site. While the code snippets in many cases are simply good examples of usage or demonstration of a principle and therefore don't really need to be used verbatim, there is the occasional inclusion of a fully realized tool that is very useful. While I doubted that there was ever a significant risk from using something I found here, I don't have a right to subject my company to any such risk. And while I would likely still come here regardless, there are others who might read the terms of use and just move on since there are other sites which don't have such restrictions. That would be unfortunate for both us and them.