[hn_throwaway_99]

First off, just want to say thanks for your posts, I found they give useful context and I really appreciate them.

I don't want the following to come off as unnecessarily argumentative, but regarding the ToS, I'm not a lawyer either, but my "ability to read English" interpretation of the section on "perform or publish benchmarks..." certainly sounds like it is prohibiting folks from doing their own side-by-side comparisons. Which is, of course, nonsense, because any engineer worth their salt would do their own analysis, even if they didn't publish it.

Just sounds to me like the CloudFlare lawyers got a little too aggressive to the point of absurdity, but I still think it's fair to call out CloudFlare for this.

[ldoughty]

Note that the CEO had replied too this parent thread and said he is removing that language

[unityByFreedom]

Plus it was there to prevent DoS attacks which is understandable.

Even without the ToS language, if you're really going to stress test a service, it's probably a good idea to give them a heads up, lest you get marked a bad actor.

[dmurray]

He still should take some responsibility for it being there in the first place. "Our legal department insists on adding user-hostile clauses everywhere they get the chance" is an OK excuse for a Cloudflare sales rep or engineer, but it's disingenuous coming from the guy who is in a position to tell them to take a friendlier approach by default.

I'm assuming this isn't the only overly restrictive clause in the contract. Maybe it's an anomaly in an otherwise respectful ToS.

[floatingatoll]

He’s the CEO. He acknowledged it and is fixing it. There is no more responsibility left unclaimed.

We aren’t owed a historical explanation, and yet we’ll likely receive one with what I presume will be a TOS update blog post in a few weeks.

I feel like this is that moment where someone lays on the car horn because they want to be sure the other driver understands that they’re a bad person, and should feel bad about themselves. It’s not about making you right by their actions, it’s about making sure they know the depth of your anger at them.

That has little value here. It’s socially valuable in interpersonal interactions, but it’s a tire fire when left uncurbed at Internet scale, and becomes vitriolic and harmful to discourse.

I may have misunderstood your specific intentions and desires from the CEO, and if so, I apologize; but I stand by my point in the general sense for all of us.