Re: Autodesk Lawsuit - Non-Transferable Licenses

Christopher Wright wrote:

>> <<"A lawsuit has been filed in Federal Court (US District Court for
>> the
>> Western Washington District C07-1189 JLR) that alleges Autodesk, Inc
>> maker of the industry standard AutoCAD software and their attorney
>> Andrew S. Mackay have devised an illegal scheme to have used copies of
>> their software removed from the eBay site using the Digital Millennium
>> Copyright Act. Finally someone decided that non-transferable licenses
>> must be stopped.">>

> Someone's finally started to realize that it's worthwhile suing
> software companies. Maybe the next step is some accountability for
> bugs and lousy service.

I quote myself from Slashdot below,
<a href="http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=297335&cid=20598921:">http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=297335&cid=20598921:</a>

<<Autodesk became as big as it is because for many years they turned a blind eye to people copying their software. More "unofficial" users playing with AutoCAD meant more marketshare later because CAD tends to be fairly complicated to learn and use effectively. Built-in familiarity with the interface and basic features also helped a lot - "I can draw stuff with AutoCAD, therefore I am a draftsman"-type qualifications.

Some people simply do not need to upgrade to or buy the latest, greatest version of software (unless they are forced to due to license expiration or having to stay compatible with customers).

I seem to recall that Autodesk tried a subscription model at one time but it didn't work out as they liked, as users didn't want to be caught in a "ransom"-type situation whereby they'd be forced to make payments without any guarantees of later software improvements. Engineers tend to be a practical lot.

As with all software, there comes a point when good enough is good enough. A lot of new software releases these days (at least in some industries) seem to be mostly sizzle and little steak.

I use AutoCAD 2005 daily as a platform for 3rd-party 3D plant design software. It's good enough, and switching to a newer version would likely break the way I do things now. Even these days with quite powerful computers (ACAD R14 on a 486DX was the first truly useful Windows-based AutoCAD, IMO) there are still things that cannot be done, so drawings have to be manually edited. As soon as you manually edit a deliverable you've lost the advantage of automatic extraction of detailed fabrication drawings and you end up with a hybrid document that can easily turn into a time bomb (so to speak) in the field.

After all this rambling I guess my point is that ever-increasing complexity (and the associated cost, of course) in software can be more trouble than it's worth unless designs can be output directly to a machine or robot to build the thing you're imagining. If your work involves actual human beings constructing things in an outdoor environment, 2D drawings are still needed. Ergo, 2D CAD is often good enough and I don't see why selling obsolete (but still useful), paid-for copies of software should be not permitted. Hell, monitoring sales could be a great indicator of what the market actually wants, rather than foisting the next upgrade on everyone.>> Received on Fri Sep 14 22:30:00 2007