Legal or ethical?

Is it legal or ethical to make money off a free api? I am hoping to use dev.to api and generate some income do u think it is illegal?

Comments

[Gary Bell]

Yes it's illegal. See the terms of use

[Ben Sinclair]

The only thing close in that page is this:

Permission is granted to temporarily download one copy of the materials (information or software) on DEV's web site for personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only

which is clearly intended to refer to web pages, not the API.

The API can be used to drive things like Gatsby websites showcasing your posts, and so on - that's even encouraged.

There's no mention of anything specific that I can find, and since I believe the API is rate-limited you shouldn't be able to do anything untoward unless you were distributing an app that made direct requests.

As far as making money off it - well, you could put a "buy me a coffee" link on your Gatsby site sourced from the API and that would technically be making money from the API.

It's not cut-and-dried.

[Gary Bell]

See i saw the part:

you may not:
modify or copy the materials;
use the materials for any commercial purpose, or for any public display (commercial or non-commercial);

The commercial part drove my view

[YohannesTz]

So this means i can't use it right?

[Gary Bell]

Reach out to the actual Dev.to team and see what they say. They may limit requests, or be able to license it.

I'm not a lawyer, but if you don't ask, you can expect to get cut off at any point.

[YohannesTz]

Okay thanks