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UCITA Stalled At State Level
OscarGunther writes "Four states have passed anti-UCITA laws and Massachusetts may soon become the fifth. Meanwhile, only two states have adopted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, which gives software vendors all the benefits and none of the burdens of the consequences of publishing their software. The details can be found at ComputerWorld and an opinion piece by Frank Hayes can be found here."
I hope a lot more pass those kind of laws...I mean if more than 2/3 of the states pass such laws there will be a bassis to build a constitutional amendment movement :-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
This kind of stupidity is usually the kind of dumbness that lawyers love. Anybody who knows what they're doing in the computer industry knows that 127.0.0.1 is the IP address of "localhost" and isn't a real address of another installation, but apparently this company didn't. In a fair world, that company would owe actual damages for lost productivity due to this mistake, and maybe even punitive damages because what they did was just that stupid.
But, in the tech industry we're establishing the tradition that software is always going to be buggy, and software providers are just always going to be making mistakes and we're just going to have to tolerate them when they happen if we want to have software. Microsoft seems to rely on all of the "you promise not to sue us..." clauses in their EULA on a daily basis, even though their standard EULA hasn't really been tested with the kind of lawsuits that show whether all of their anti-liablity clauses are in fact valid. This is why software publishers want UCITA passed, so that they're sure their anti-liabity clauses are in fact going to hold up.
Their worse nightmare is a law that's the exact inverse of UCITA, one that would give customers the right to hold their software vendors liable whenever they screw up... but wouldn't that be the kind of thing that'd force software vendors to test before they ship?
On another note, I've stopped worrying about all the legislative garbage and contract trickery some large companies are spewing out. It does a fantastic job of convincing people that they are not looking to benefit the paying customer. It's going to kill them. Maybe not tomorrow, but if they don't ease up, everyone who doesn't hate them right now will. Just remember, whenever you try to corner the market and drive up prices, people will either use an alternative or stop using your product. Don't worry... they have plenty of rope to hang themselves with. They're just putting the finishing touches on the knot.
IAAL
Would you skydive with a parachute pre-packed and sold to you by some anonymous guy in a back alley?
For the same reasons no one should use an insulin pump that isn't guaranteed by a company.
If no guarantee is required to sell insulin pumps and a fellow chooses an insulin pump that is not guaranteed and it fails, he has only himself to blame (financial matters aside).
The issue is that guaranteeing something is an expensive process, just like getting an SLA for service quality you already have is most likely going to cost quite a bit. The UCITA would have you believe that a guarantee is free: it comes with every piece of software. This is not --- and should not be --- the case: I can't afford to guarantee my work, but I do promise to label my releases by how confident I am in them.
Unless, of course, you were to pay me. A lot of money. Then I could hire someone to do an outside code audit as well as do my own internal beefing up of a version I am confident in. And I could build a testing environment for it. And prove the algorithms correct. And get a custom machine built for it. That's what it takes to "guarantee" software.
The courts are all about interpretting the word "reasonable". Nobody says a small, cheap, software product has to be flawless. It just can't contain any unreasonable flaws that due care and attention would have caught.
As in, if the customer types in a bizarre string into the zipcode box and it crashes, this is probably reasonable for cheap software. If you sell it and it turns out that it can't save documents...
If you buy a car there's an implicit guarantee that it will function as a car. No guarantee about how reliable it'll be (past a certain point) or if it'll perform as the looks would suggest, but it had better get your from point A to B. If it doesn't, you can sue the company to refund your money, plus pay for the time you wasted trying to get the lemon to work.
Why should software be any different? If you sell a product that doesn't even function as promised on the back of the jewel case, why isn't that fraud? Just because it's a CD and not a device isn't a compelling argument in my opinion.
Well, I'd never heard of InstallAnywhere by Zero G, so it didn't stand out. But now (after a quick googling) I have, and my post of their unobfuscated name means that this discussion will get archived for an eternity on various search engines.
Whenever I have a complaint about a company I make sure to use search terms, (as a search engine looks for them; company name together, etc) so that my post will be found by others.
I don't need an installer now, but if I did, I wouldn't buy their product because I hate dealing with jerks who do things like remotely disable software. (Hell, jerks who write phone-home routines in the first place.)
Phone-home was cool in the mid nineties. I was really proud of my first phone-home system. You couldn't just assume there was a network connection back then. That made it a lot more work and I must admit I never did find a surefire way to get around every proxy situation. I put all kinds of goodies in it: one-time disposable passwords, blowfish encryption --the works. I ended up with all these backdoors in my system that didn't show up till much later from researching all that security crap. But in the end, as soon as sales dropped all that junk went out the window. Sure was fun putting it together though. The good ol' days.
But hey, now we have a good start on a virtual socialist utopia. I'm not crying. It's all good. Who needs money if we can actually learn to share. Even though I had fun playing with proto-DRM back in the day, I agree that shit is evil and we're better off without it. The whole MS version of the software market is nothing but a pyramid scheme. I'm still getting paid for it, but it won't last and I'm glad.
"They disabled our liscence...saying we only had a one machine liscence to use the product, and the install builder software had called back to the company supplying two different IP addresses...and thus, had been registered on two different computers."
A similar case has been brought before court. The software had reported to its publisher about (apparent) illegal copies being used, without the knowledge or consent of the client company. The court ruled that obtaining such information without permission constitutes a breach of privacy, and 'electronic trespassing', a criminal offense.
I've had my share of license issues, where a license server would get confused and release (for example) the C compiler for use, and we had to call the software company to get things fixed. License servers are a pain in the neck, and they are just one more reason to use Free, Open Source tools. I am not an idealist in favour of Free software, but rather a practical guy who will dump a product if it refuses to work too often
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Unfortunately, congress just passed a law that they get automatic, yearly pay raises, and the supreme court said it was ok
Strictly speaking, the 10th amendment (all powers not given to congress are reserved for the states or for the people) hasn't applied lately.
We all heard about the arguments agaisnt the anti UCITA clause which will give vendors god like powers but lets look at this through another angle.
What about free or OSS software?
Do any of you know how extreme the UCITA is and why the anti measures are being adopted?
Under the UCITA, a developer is liable for their products. If some nut decides to install Linux kernel 2.5x for a mission critical server and it crashes causing thousands of dollars of lost revenue then Linus is held liable!
Or what about some asshole who wants to never work by suing people decides to install your product and then sues you if it doesn't work?
Corporations can afford lawyers. Individuals can not.
I welcome the anti-UCITA as it protects free software, innovation, and software corporations. Remember this was formed from lawyers lobbing the democratic party. They want to sue everyone who makes software so they can fill their pockets.
Yes I believe some of the clauses for this might be extreme but the UCITA is quite extreme in its own right.
We need some moderation in laws but right now its a game of who would you like to fight? Corporations or lawyers? I chose corporations.
If a corporation acts like an asshole then do not use their products and develop a free alternative. However a lawyer can do alot more damage to free software and could kill it. Meanwhile the price of regular commercial software will go through the roof to pay for these redicolous software. An EULA already gives these corporations godlike powers anyway.
http://saveie6.com/