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Re:Atlassian Cloud ToS section 3.3(I) prohibits discussing p... by ineedasername on Saturday January 02, 2021 @01:02PM (#25614770)
That explains the stance but is not sufficient to justify it. It gives Atlassian infinite power to stomp on any benchmark that shows poor performance under a claim that it is flawed. It is also irrelevant that it's been in your ToS since 2012: Precedent or longevity do not make consumer-unfriendly restrictions acceptable.

This is implicitly recognized by allowing internal assessment: That assessment would be just as vulnerable to flawed methodology and therefore flawed decision making on products. If you were that concerned over such issues, you could issue further restrictions on performance assessment that limited such activity to be conducted only under Atlassian's close review or using your own mandated methodology. One reason you probably don't do that is because potential buyers would balk at those restrictions and either pass on your product or responsibly engage in due diligence and perform their own assessments regardless.

Further, the resources to do extensive internal assessment may be lacking in many organizations, which means your provision to allow internal testing is meaningless to many customers. As a result, the prohibition against public disclosure thereby deprives them of any way of obtaining objective external analysis.

You could satisfy your concerns by requiring that public disclosure be reviewed by Atlassian prior to publication. You could require an option for Atlassian to comment on the results with embedded notations without restricting publication itself. That would still be heavy handed but at least allow a reasonable amount of independent review of your performance.

Re:Atlassian Cloud ToS section 3.3(I) prohibits discussing p... by sytse on Saturday January 02, 2021 @01:23PM (#25614993)
Those suggestions in your last paragraph look very reasonable to me. At GitLab we explicitly allow performance testing as our ninth and final stewardship promise https://about.gitlab.com/company/stewardship/#promises But I recognize there is a trade-off and companies can reasonably but the balance at different points.
Re:Atlassian Cloud ToS section 3.3(I) prohibits discussing p... by jiggawatts on Saturday January 02, 2021 @03:29PM (#25616191)
There is no tradeoff.

DeWitt clauses are corporate censorship and are 100% self-serving.

There is zero benefit to consumers having no benchmarks at all available for entire product categories.

There is an enormous benefit to corporations to be able to silence critics with the threat of bankruptcy via lawsuit.

This is big corporations using the law to bully journalists and citizens, nothing more.

Re:Atlassian Cloud ToS section 3.3(I) prohibits discussing p... by ineedasername on Saturday January 02, 2021 @06:34PM (#25617730)
Pretty much, yes. That's why I included an example of how they could allow transparent assessment while still addressing their stated concerns. Because it shows the stated concerns, in having a solution, are just a BS smoke screen. (Not that my proposed scenario is still the best case for consumers, just that there's a way they could allow public benchmarks without sacrificing their concerns)