Is it legal or ethical to make money off a free api? I am hoping to use dev.to api and generate some income do u think it is illegal?
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Top comments (6)
Yes it's illegal. See the terms of use
The only thing close in that page is this:
which is clearly intended to refer to web pages, not the API.
The API can be used to drive things like Gatsby websites showcasing your posts, and so on - that's even encouraged.
There's no mention of anything specific that I can find, and since I believe the API is rate-limited you shouldn't be able to do anything untoward unless you were distributing an app that made direct requests.
As far as making money off it - well, you could put a "buy me a coffee" link on your Gatsby site sourced from the API and that would technically be making money from the API.
It's not cut-and-dried.
See i saw the part:
The commercial part drove my view
So this means i can't use it right?
Reach out to the actual Dev.to team and see what they say. They may limit requests, or be able to license it.
I'm not a lawyer, but if you don't ask, you can expect to get cut off at any point.
Okay thanks