This month, we’re thrilled to announce upcoming upgrades to our infrastructure and a series of new training workshops tailored to support your AI and computational needs. These enhancements aim to provide more powerful and seamless computing resources, ensuring that your research and projects run smoothly.

We value your feedback and invite you to participate in our brief survey to help us prioritize these improvements effectively. Your input is crucial as we strive to make your computing experience on campus as efficient and rewarding as possible.

Conda is an open source package and environment management system that was originally developed by Anaconda Inc. Conda supports many programming languages including Python, R, C++, etc. Using Conda has many advantages, and it is available as a module on CRC machines. For more information about Conda usage on our systems, please visit our Documentation webpage.

Anaconda Inc. has recently changed their Terms of Service (TOS), and in the following article we walk through the relevant changes so that we can make sure to be compliant with the updated license agreement.

Users & Licensing section from the updated TOS

“... 2. USERS & LICENSING

2.1 Organizational Use.  Your registration, download, use, installation, access, or enjoyment of all Anaconda Offerings on behalf of an organization that has two hundred (200) or more employees or contractors ("Organizational Use") requires a paid license of Anaconda  Business or Anaconda Enterprise. For sake of clarity, use by government entities and non profit entities with over 200 employees or contractors is considered Organizational Use.  Purchasing Starter tier license(s) does not satisfy the Organizational Use paid license requirement set forth in this Section 2.1. 

Educational Entities will be exempt from the paid license requirement, provided that the use of the Anaconda Offering(s) is solely limited to being used for a curriculum-based course. Anaconda reserves the right to monitor the registration, download, use, installation, access, or enjoyment of the Anaconda Offerings to ensure it is part of a curriculum. …”

- Terms of Service

What does this mean for us at Notre Dame?

The 200-employee threshold also applies to non profit organizations, like the University of Notre Dame. It means that our usage is considered as Organizational Use, so the usage of the Anaconda Offerings (explained below in more detail) requires a paid license. Educational entities are exempt from the paid license as long as the usage of the Anaconda Offerings is solely limited to curriculum-based courses. 

We still need to clarify what the Anaconda Offerings term in the TOS means exactly to completely understand the changes. It is important to clarify that conda, the package and environment management software is open-source (licensed under BSD license), and the usage of this software does not require a paid license. The Anaconda Offerings term means that a paid license is required for the usage of the Anaconda distribution and the defaults channel. 

Anaconda distribution and the defaults channel

Even though conda is free, the usage of the Anaconda distribution and the defaults channel requires a paid license. The Anaconda distribution comes with many useful, curated and secure software packages that are widely used for, e.g., data science and AI. Anaconda Inc. employs software engineers who maintain, curate and build these packages to ensure that the usage of these packages is safe and secure in sensitive environments (e.g., usage by companies, projects that work with sensitive data, etc.), too.  These curated packages are available in the defaults channel. For the Anaconda distribution and Miniconda the default channel for package installation is set to the defaults channel. The defaults channel includes the following channels: pkgs/main, pkgs/r, pkgs/msys2 (only necessary on Windows machines). 

Other channels

The conda-forge, bioconda, and other publicly available community channels are free to use by anyone.

Miniconda and Miniforge installers

Miniconda and Miniforge are called installers and not distributions because these only install conda, Python and the dependent packages. The difference between these installers is that the default channel for package installation is set to the defaults channel in case of the Miniconda installer, and to the conda-forge channel in case of the Miniforge installer.

Installing packages

When installing packages with Conda (in environments that are not used for curriculum based classes), please make sure to use the -c option with one of the free channels, e.g.:

conda install package-name -c conda-forge

When you use the Miniforge installer, using the -c conda-forge option is not necessary.

Conclusion

Conda, the package and environment management software, is open source and free to use by anyone. The Anaconda distribution and the software packages in the defaults channel requires a paid license. The other publicly available community channels (bioconda, conda-forge, etc.) are free to use by anyone.

Educational institutions are exempt from the paid license when it is used for curriculum-based classes. 

This topic is discussed in more detail in the following blog post on the official Anaconda website. 

Every Wednesday and Thursday
2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
812 Flanner Hall (map)

The CRC offers multiple training opportunities for both new and existing users. We periodically provide short courses and other learning opportunities, which are advertised on our website and through email lists. In-person office hours are held every Wednesday and Thursday from 2:00-3:30 p.m. in Flanner Hall, room 812, on a first-come, first-served basis. You can also arrange a Zoom meeting at your convenience by emailing CRCsupport@nd.edu with your availability. We recommend bringing a laptop to in-person sessions.

For more information, please contact CRCsupport@nd.edu.

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