Chromium and Google API keys

[Ignacio Areta <ignacio@planetmail.net>]

Hello list,

I'm not a Debian user, but probably this question is related to Debian too.

So, let's go to the story:

Recently I was doing some research to create a custom Chromium package, because at that time my main distro (openSUSE) wasn't shipping a stable version of that and it was using the libxml from system, which was causing some problems in the vBulletin forums.

When I looked to the specs of that package, I found this:
"# Set up Google API keys, see http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys
# Note: these are for the openSUSE Chromium builds ONLY. For your own distribution,
# please get your own set of keys."

And the API keys in question (lines 464-470)
https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/network:chromium/chromium/chromium.spec?expand=1

In the Arch's PKGBUILD, I found a similar warning (lines 48-54):
"# Google API keys (see http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys)
# Note: These are for Arch Linux use ONLY. For your own distribution, please
# get your own set of keys. Feel free to contact foutrelis@archlinux.org for
# more information."

https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/chromium

Also, the instructions to build Chromium states
"Before you build, you should also install API keys."
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxBuildInstructions

Doing some research about this, I found this thread
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-dev/Qks4W0xLxqc

And the terms of service of these APIs.
https://developers.google.com/terms/

And also, Debian is using these API keys (see lines 60-63)
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-chromium/pkg-chromium.git;a=blob;f=debian/rules;h=507355a9d0d1eb69b746aed2a17c4566d7d1258e;hb=HEAD

So, my question is: is the API keys terms of service compatible with DFSG? Two parts of these terms doesn't appears FOSS-friendly for me.

"You will not sublicense an API for use by a third party. Consequently, you will not create an API Client that functions substantially the same as the APIs and offer it for use by third parties"

"You will not reverse engineer or attempt to extract the source code from any API or any related software, except to the extent that this restriction is expressly prohibited by applicable law."

BTW, Chromium depends of these APIs to use some Google's services, like Google Sync. But (it seems) Chromium can be compiled and used without these API keys too. What do you think about this?

Thanks for the attention,
Ignacio