Search Unity

Examples from the Manual cannot be used commercially, why?

Discussion in 'Scripting' started by BlackclawsK, Aug 4, 2021.

  1. BlackclawsK

    BlackclawsK

    Joined:
    Jan 9, 2019
    Posts:
    100
    So I've run into the following interesting piece of information that I wasn't aware of before and I wanted to:

    a) share it since I haven't found a post on it
    b) ask for some sort of clarification why this is the case

    It appears that examples that show up in the manual: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ are for some reason only licensed for non-commercial use. This means that you cannot (legally) build any game that incorporates example code from the manual (which is marketed in a way that this is an example you can build on).

    The license terms can be found by diving into the "Legal" Section at the bottom of the main Unity website and this interpretation was confirmed to an acquaintance by the Unity legal team.

    For me this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If you release a manual you expect that people will use it to use your technology. If you now restrict the usage of said code, via some deeply buried legal terminology that comes across as very unfriendly to the consumers of your manuals.

    To be clear it is never outright stated in the manual that the examples would not be free to use for any purpose, its also never stated that they are (in which case I guess the assumption has to be: They're not). However having them as part of a manual is (to me at least) implying that they are there under the assumption that they will be used.

    This is especially surprising as the scripting reference explicitly IS free to use: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/

    Its just the examples in the manual that have restrictions placed upon them.

    If possible it would be great if someone from Unity could comment on why those restrictions are in place and maybe place a disclaimer front and center on the manual stating those restrictions clearly so that people don't run into the trap of using example code found in the manuals in actual commercial software.
     
  2. LeonhardP

    LeonhardP

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2016
    Posts:
    3,136
    Thank you for raising this. Unity's legal team is currently reviewing the licensing position of snippets in Documentation with the teams who create this content. Due to the vacation season this review is not yet complete. We plan to have an update by the end of September.