Anaconda puts the squeeze on data scientists now deemed to be terms-of-service violators

Academic, non-profit organizations told to start paying up – or else

Updated Research and academic organizations are just now finding out that they will have to pay for software made by Anaconda, when for years these groups were under the impression it could be used at no cost.

That realization follows the data science biz broadening its pursuit of what it sees as violators of its shifting terms-of-service.

A source who works at a medium-size non-profit academic research institution told The Register about being on the end of a legal demand to purchase a commercial license for the Anaconda-built software they had been using for free.

"We wish to inform you that, should this situation persist … our legal team may be compelled to consider measures aligned with our prevailing pricing and invoicing policies, which could include issuing back bills for any unauthorized or excess usage of Anaconda products," the note to the institution read.

Observing that the message came via a mailing list application, our source speculated Anaconda has sent out many such letters and suggested that the Texas-based developer, following the appointment of CEO Barry Libert in January 2024, has become quite interested in enforcing license compliance.

"This will be a huge issue for universities and the research community who were basically exempt until the new terms of service updated in March 2024," our source told us.

"Research and non-profits are also the entities providing a lot of the repositories in the anaconda.org ecosystem. I believe Anaconda are currently testing to see what happens if they play hardball with them."

The source said interaction with Anaconda echoed Oracle’s tactics – in that the biz is convinced licensing fees dating back years can be sought.

Background

Anaconda offers a distribution of Python and R programming languages that includes a curated set of open source data science packages for scientific and academic applications. The Anaconda distribution includes a package manager called Conda, and is presently offered in four tiers: Free, Starter, Business, and Enterprise. About 40 million people use the Anaconda distribution, according to the company.

In April 2020, Anaconda introduced a fee for "heavy commercial use," and in October that year clarified that term to mean organizations with more than 200 employees. "Anaconda will always offer a free version for academics, hobbyists, non-profits, and small businesses," the developer said that month.

Organizations with 200 or more people are today required to purchase a Business or Enterprise license.

It doesn't help that Anaconda’s messaging about its licensing terms is, arguably, difficult to follow.

Its Commercial Edition FAQs right now state, “We clarified our definition of commercial usage in our terms of service in an update on Sept 30, 2020. The new language states that use by individual hobbyists, students, universities, non-profit organizations, or businesses with less than 200 employees is allowed, and all other usage is considered commercial and thus requires a business relationship with Anaconda.”

But it not obvious from that paragraph whether the 200 person limit applies just to businesses or also to universities and non-profit organizations. A subsequent section focuses on just businesses and government: "You’re not in compliance with our terms of service if you are using Anaconda’s repositories in a for-profit or government organization with over 200 employees outside of a business relationship with Anaconda."

And wording that excluded non-government academic and non-profit organizations disappeared from the terms-of-service by May 2023 with no apparent notice.

Now the terms of service, dated March this year, insist "government entities and non-profit entities with over 200 employees or contractors" must pay. There is an exception for the use of Anaconda’s software to teach classes.

Since 2020, it hasn't been clear whether non-profits and academics fall under the 200-person limit or not, leading to surprise from researchers when they've been hit with payment demands.

Priorities changed

Presented with our source's concerns, Barry Libert, CEO of Anaconda, said his private org's licensing change dates back four years, referring to those initial changes we outlined, and he acknowledged putting more effort lately into identifying license violators.

"Anaconda updated its terms of service four years ago to offset the significant costs associated with maintaining and hosting our platform and services," Libert told The Register.

We are prioritizing addressing cases where our ToS are being abused

"We've taken a fair and transparent approach by providing generous notice to violators of our terms of service. However, we are prioritizing addressing cases where our ToS are being abused."

"For larger organizations with two hundred or more employees, a paid license has been required since 2020," he continued, though as we noted, in 2020, Anaconda promised it "will always offer a free version" for academics and non-profits.

"We remain committed to supporting data science and machine learning professionals using Python by providing secure libraries that deliver immense value to individuals and their organizations. At the same time, we have a business to run, with employees we need to serve, and who serve our tens of millions of users and over a million organizations."

Asked whether Anaconda is bringing in more revenue now from academic institutions and non-profits than it did in recent years, Libert replied: "No, Anaconda is not bringing in more revenue from academic institutions and non-profits compared to a year or two years ago. We continue to actively support researchers and academics as we always have, plus we continue to contribute more than seven figures a year to support the Python community."

Libert said Anaconda will be free for individuals and small organizations – those with fewer than two hundred employees and contractors. "Anaconda is also free for educational entities when used in course curriculum," he said.

These changes have left research organizations scrambling after being told, in their view out of blue, that they now need to start paying for what they understood to be previously cost free.

Last week, Mass General Brigham (MGB), a non-profit hospital-research organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, issued a critical notification advising potential users of Anaconda that they have until the end of August to purchase a license. The organization said it will no longer make Anaconda available in the general software repositories of its HPC cluster and that researchers who require the software need to purchase a license.

"Anaconda recently informed MGB that we appeared to have many users of this product that require the purchase of a paid license," the notification explains.

MGB in a separate post said it "was only alerted to this issue in early 2024."

Libert allowed that perhaps Anaconda could have made its licensing changes clearer.

"We understand and regret that some organizations feel they did not receive adequate notice about the changes to our terms of service," he conceded.

"Since implementing these changes in 2020, Anaconda has consistently communicated updates through multiple channels. While we cannot comment on the timing for specific organizations, we have made significant efforts to inform all users. We remain committed to supporting our customers and addressing any concerns during this transition." ®

Update on August 9

The day after we published our piece, it emerged Anaconda is suing Intel in a US federal court, accusing the chipmaker of using the developer's data science software with an expired license to build AI tech.

"Intel intentionally leveraged Anaconda's technological innovations to improve Intel's own products and establish its foothold in the now-booming artificial intelligence market," the lawsuit stated.