I avoid stuff like that with a passion, simply because I don't trust what could (or will) happen with my coding efforts.
With sites like these my first interest are the usage policies; what can and can't they do with my stuff? So when I start looking at their
About page you only get a vague mission statement: "
to revolutionize technical workbenches by leveraging cloud’s collaborative, shared, and elastic attributes to make developers more productive. We strive for simplicity, efficiency and productivity.". A lot of marketing jargon, in my opinion quite hollow, right there.
So, then my attention focusses to the
terms of service and their
privacy policy. I'm not a believer.
They basically divide their contents into "codenvy content" and "Third party content". So far so good, but the definitions for both content sections leaves much to desire:
"
Third party content: Third Party Content is the copyrighted work of its owner, who expressly retains all right title and interest in and to the Third Party Content, including, without limitation, all intellectual property rights therein and thereto. In addition to being subject to these Terms of Service, Third Party Content may also be subject to different and/or additional terms of use and/or privacy policies of such third parties.".
So far this seems trustworthy enough, no? They even allow you to license your own work using whatever license you can come up with. But note that this isn't
limited to any license you may provide, it falls under this terms of service
as well as any optional provided (extra) license. So we need to continue reading because Codenvy's rights don't stop here:
"
User content: If you elect to display, post, submit or otherwise make available to others, on the Site any content or works of authorship, including, without limitation, images, audio files, text, software (but excluding User software) or other materials, (collectively, “User Contentâ€), you hereby grant to Codenvy a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive right and license, including the right to grant sublicenses to third parties, to use, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, prepare derivative works from and distribute such User Content, for any purpose."
Although there are 2 types of projects, public and private, even private projects will fall under this specific term. After all: a private project is defined as follows: "
The contents of Private Projects may only be viewed by the User controlling the account where the project is being developed, and others to whom such User chooses to grant access.".
So private or not; it still holds a definition of something which can be viewed by the user as well as others. As such it immediately falls under the global user content statement, thus allowing Codenvy to do whatever they want with your stuff.
So I'll pass.
One way or the other; sites like these are developed for one single purpose and that's to somehow try and generate some revenue. Your labour and efforts will be (ab?)used by others to generate an income. Whether or not it's all worth it is of course something I can't say. Personally I'd rather invest in a local development environment I can fully control myself.
