begin oe_protect.scr
peterwn <peterwn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> Giant Robot Imprisons Parked Cars
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | The robot that parks cars at the Garden Street Garage in Hoboken, New
>> | Jersey, trapped hundreds of its wards last week for several days. But
>> | it wasn't the technology car owners had to curse, it was the terms of
>> | a software license.
>> `----
>>
> There is some question as to whether cars were actually trapped. More
> likely that when the time bomb 'went off' the software refused to store
> any cars- this would make more sense from the software maker's point of
> view.
>
It seemed to me that some people were unable to get their cars, as they
were stored and the robots just stopped.
> It was gross negligence on the Council's part.
Indeed, but then so is pretty much every proprietary software licence,
isn't it? Basically, they're all written so that the buyer has no
rights at all. This is why the GPL is so fundamentally different, the
buyer can always access the code, no matter what.
> If they wanted to or
> had to lease the software, they should have insisted on a lease of the
> planned life of the facility with (if need be) a rent escalation clause
> subject to arbitration. Support should also have been spelt out
> subject again to arbitration.
>
I'm sure all these things were in place, at least in so far as the
council's lawyers could see, and everyone was happy enough with the
contract.
It's not that long ago that a US company "grounded" some British
submarines, after HMG had rather foolishly given a maintenance contract
to a foreign company.
If you look at most major software contracts, they read pretty much the
same way - buyer has no rights, because the copyright of the code is
with the vendor.
I've been pointing this out for years here, and equally pointing out
that these kinds of events are going to become more common until buyers
learn that proprietary licences are in a vendor's interests only.
People criticise RMS heavily for pointing out this simple fact, because
it undermines the whole concept of a lock-in business case.
In this case, of course, lock-in is more than just the software, it was
the cars, too...
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
Ernest asks Frank how long he has been working for the company.
"Ever since they threatened to fire me."
|
|
