FossHub & AutoPkg

Standard

A few years ago FossHub’s Terms of Service (read: TOS) did not allow for automated downloads.

This has changed recently, with details on how to now download from FossHub via AutoPkg below.

What happened?

The details of the original change to not allow for automated downloads, is detailed some here.

What changed?

The TOS changed in the second half of 2018, with the below noted in the TOS’s exceptions section:

If you wish to retrieve files from www.fosshub.com using an automated tool or script with the purpose of redistributing them on your internal network, download server, download mirror, CDN or any other similar service we might allow you to do this under the following conditions:

– Inform us about your intention before any attempt to interact with our website. If possible, provide us a sample of your code/tool to see how it is designed to work with our system.
– If you are the representative of a school, University or any other educational institution.
– If you represent a non-profit organization focused on education, health or any other worthy cause.
– A company that wishes to retrieve files from us but use its own replication system.
– Any other situation that wasn’t added here but you consider it to be an exception.

Important: We reserve the right to deny certain requests if we think that will abuse our service or cause any other issues. Also, we reserve the legal right to request a financial compensation if you ignore our Terms of Service.

https://www.fosshub.com/tos.html#fh-tou-o7

So, is there a secret handshake or…?

Nothing so drastic, simply reach out via FossHub’s Contact form.

Soon after, you’ll receive something like the below:

Hello,
You can download any software title that we host (files are scanned against malware – https://blog.fosshub.com/fosshub-announcing-jotti-malware-scan-integration/), but we have a few requirements:

Please provide your server IP address so that we can whitelist you. If you plan to change the IP address, please let us know before you proceed.
You can custom your script to access and check this link: https://university.fosshub.com/projects.json (In this JSON URL, you can find all the details regarding the latest updates and file details). Just a friendly reminder to download one file a single time via an automated script, then redistributing it to your client systems from your internal network. Do not download the same file from a dozen machines!

Autopkg Example (see “Synfig” and “Pidgin”): https://github.com/autopkg/rustymyers-recipes

Legal
Please add a small visible text and a link towards our TOS section (https://www.fosshub.com/tos.html) saying that you have asked and obtained our permission to retrieve the files – where you mention that EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is respected.

Example:

“We use FossHub to check for available software updates. We acknowledge that their update checker does not perform any tracking (cookies, advertising identifiers, and similar technologies) and they respect the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines.”
References:
https://www.fosshub.com/privacy.html
https://eugdpr.org/

So, as per the requirements you need to:

  1. Let FossHub know the IP Address you’ll contact them on when running AutoPkg.
  2. Place a note linking to the TOS.

Do you have an example recipe?

Actually, yes!

Here you can find a .download recipe for Audacity in dataJAR‘s recipe repo (we have an .munki one too).

The text within the description has been pinched from the #autopkg channel on the macadmins.org slack from Anthony Reimer. (Thanks!!)

Why am I getting “Processor: URLDownloader: Error: Curl failure: The requested URL returned error: 403  (exit code 22)” errors?

The IP you’re contacting FossHub has not been whitelisted, please follow the above to get your IP whitelisted.

One thought on “FossHub & AutoPkg

  1. I’ve never had a problem with audacity guideapp it’s a bit trickier to get things to go in that way. I think I’ll use this site for my music for some time. I’ll definitely recommend this app.

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