[Freedombox-discuss] legal problem w/ Twitter (et al.)

[Thomas Lord]

On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 18:27 -0400, Les Orchard wrote:
> This is where I fail at being a lawyer, but I think that's as far as
> it goes. I suppose if a company's legal counsel really wanted to be a
> jerk and make a point, they could try drumming up some form of
> "hacking" charges against someone.

In the case of Twitter, if your program is issued a 
key (a "Consumer key and secret") then you have promised
to impose certain restrictions on the redistribution of
your program.

What it looks like to me is that most of the useful things
you would want to do to interoperate with these 
services require a key, and a key is issued only after
entering into a contract making promises about your
program that are incompatible with free software licensing.
(Though, yes, I'm not a lawyer either -- I'm just saying
what my best understanding is.)

-t