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Comment by msbarnett | Hacker News Reader

> 11. Compatibility. Each Licensee Channel must maintain 100% compatibility with the Developer Tool and the Service including changes provided to you by IFTTT, which shall be implemented in each Channel promptly thereafter.

> 17.This Agreement is personal to Licensee and may not be assigned or transferred for any reason [...]. IFTTT expressly reserves the right to assign this Agreement and to delegate any of its obligations hereunder.

Any developer signing this agreement is nuts.

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Yep. This is bad enough that the simple fact that a site integrates with IFTTT will be sufficient to trigger my brand-new 'Wow. You guys signed that? I am NOT trusting you with data I care about' reflex.

Full TOS here for anyone interested...

http://pastebin.com/UM6pHEVV

Not saying this is good contract writing, but some relevant context would be what the penalty for breaking these clauses are. If the penalty for not maintaining compatability, as stipulated in the contract, is simply "we turn off IFTTT integration with your app", then that seems reasonable. Ditto for the non-assignment clause.

Now if the penalty is three dogs and a pony, then nuts to that.

IANAL, but in general the penalty for breaking the terms of a contract, in the absence of an explicit damages clause, are whatever business loss the other party suffers as a result.

Indeed, but are the terms of service a contract? Is there any consideration?

The answer is probably no, they are merely a set of expectations they have around providing their service.

Any binding agreement between two parties is a contract. There is consideration on both sides: IFTTT is providing access to their dev kit and service, the recipient is implementing an API and providing access to their data. Both sides are, in principle, getting something from the agreement (of course, it's very lopsided and unfavorable to the recipient). Again, IANAL.

I'm surprised that a majority must have signed already, for them to actually make the switch.

Hopefully this costs them a lot of buisiness and they have to revert.

I imagine they're more than happy to maintain their Twitter recipe themselves and it's probably only the smaller services they're punting the work to

The author noted in the comments that nobody signs it, it's a passive "By using our developer site you agree.." agreement.

Are those even enforceable?

Do you have the funds to defend yourself in such a lawsuit?

Generally, yes.

> Any developer signing this agreement is nuts.

... or didn't read the TOS more likely.

Which I used to think qualified as nuts.

If you're running a business and not reading the legal agreements your business is signing up for, you're nuts ;)

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