u/Undecidicide

Full disclosure - IANAL, and I spend my free retirement time building apps which will often fall in and about the Universal Audio ecosystem. I won't say more than that so there's no confusion of commercial intent.

TL;DR - UA Connect EULA v11 dated Sep 3 hurts customers and stifles innovation.

I worked almost 15 full years in the software business. For big software companies, that many of you have probably heard of. I was there for the move to cloud, then to subscription, then to predatory practices which made me (along with the incredible promise of AI) to leave the industry entirely.

I was outspoken about the insistence that the only way you could be a good software company was to move to cloud all the way back in 2013. I was even more outspoken in 2015 when becoming a SaaS company was literally the only way you could raise funds.

Neither cloud, nor SaaS was good for customers. I was most aware of this from the cyber-security ad big data and analytics perspective. I advised several startups during the pandemic, who had 0% chance of surviving pre-customer without a big fat "Subscription-based, cloud-first" business model. Maybe you (UA) and I were talking to some of the same VCs and consultants and advisors. I don't know. I advised my startups that it was a BS strategy designed to use the three mega-scaler cloud providers stock as an instrument for circular investment which would ultimately benefit the big venture capital firms and destroy thousands of amazing products, companies, and founders. You can judge if I was right.

I opened UA connect this evening to see what needed updating, and I was presented with a new click-through UA End-user License Agreement. I have issues.

1. The text is deliberately long (single body all languages), complex, and inaccessible to copy paste, and serves no "review offline" methods.
2. No prior versions (even the most recent) are available to diff. UA serves all prior versions (for now) but doesn't list them. I had to find them via internet archive. This is shady and makes it impossible to understand whats new.
3. There is a buried "ancillary OX, UAFX, Volt, or UA Microphone agreement" at the very end which, to my knowledge, only exists on the mandatory click-through agreement with UA Connect on Mac. If I am missing the honest duplication of these terms in the public pdf of version 11, or anyway really, please LMK. Burying it and hiding it isn't a good look.
4. New in version 11 is explicit terms against scraping, and robots. I am fine with this. But next in the list is "automated access." This likely prevents other applications from connecting via APIs. You must recognize that soon every one of your customers will be able to build their own, customized software, workflows, apps, and more. This likely isn't just an issue for AI, but could affect using tools like curl to automate your studio.

I think UA has a closing-door opportunity to embrace the future, forget the self-serving BS that the money is selling, and embrace the inevitable future and disruption coming for the dinosaurs that cling to these old business models. You make AMAZING software and hardware. Don't ruin your own legacy by supporting practices which ultimately disenfranchise creative people and perpetuate the wealth and technology gap.

-Undecidicide (Drew knows where to find me)

Been building to this since ChatGPT launch, but I use mostly anthropic and hugging space. What you are listening to is the system reasoning itself through a bunch of complex scenarios, flagging gaps, and consolidating.