Slashdot Mirror
Source Code Escrow
Makarand writes "According to this article in The Economic Times (India) Software companies in India
are embracing the trend where source code for the software being bought or sold
is
kept safe with an escrow agent
with carefully drafted agreements. This allows
the buyer to get hold of the source code in cases where software was licensed from a
start-up which has now folded or a breach of contract regarding the maintenance services
that were agreed upon can be proven. The source code is automatically released
upon the occurrence of any of the events mentioned in the escrow agreement and the
buyer will be able to study the source code and continue to provide support services
for the software bought without relying on the employees of the software supplier."
Merry Christmas.
If it were open source like it SHOULD BE then there's no reason to have this 'solution' to a problem that would be 'non existent'.
Closed source. Feeding the middle man. and the other middle man. and the other middle man again, ad infinitum
OSDN Personals?
WHAT IN TEH FUCK IS GOING ON!?
Slashdot has really gone to shit... I hope this place dies.
yuo = huge failure in life
asl?
(*>
/|\
/ )
8==========D
3-Legged Penis Bird Recently Discovered in Poland (AP photo).
SLEUSOISHEWICZKI, POLAND (AP) - A new species of Penis Bird (lateralus phallicus) was discovered upon the penis of a Polish whoremaster in Brussels today. Stanley Wlosdrjfski, who asked that his name be withheld, mentioned to his doctor that there seemed to be a strange growth on his cock-and-balls. Doktor Fritz Sklflsdffmdkski, who also asked that his name be withheld, immediately called a press conference to express his joy at once again being able to look at another man's penis. WHoops, we mean at discovering the bird. The good doktor also notified EPA spokeswoman Pamela Handerson, who was so overjoyed at the thought of a new species of Penis Bird that she immediately began to massage and poke at her naughty bits.
Later, she full-fisted her own asshole as she named the new species: "OHHHHH, FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!," she screamed in ecstasy. "I DUB THIS NEW SPECIES....TRIPHALLICA!!!!" Meanwhile, a more sensible individual (whose name is not known at press time) gave the Latin name of the new species as Lateralus Triphallicus. The new Penis Bird itself seemed rather indifferent to all of this as it continued to peck and claw at the cock of Sklflsdffmdkski, who was quoted as saying, "AUGH!!! Fucking birds! What the hell are you laughing at?! Fuck you, roundeye!"
Since the Indians don't write miantainable code anyway, I don't see how turning over a bunch of poorly written, un-maintainable code to a third party after the the vendor has failed to deliver will do much good. It would be far better to hire a couple of highly skilled reliable programmers to do you're project. The approach of trying to produce good code by hiring many low skilled off shore programmers is bound to produce poor results. I know this sounds troll, but have yoe ever seen WIPRO code, it is horrendous and unmaimtainable. Hiring laywers when you should be hirng good reliable (not off shore!) programmers is a watse of money. MM
In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April Fools prank kept alive for over 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:
) %2 ))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);
``In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I had just started working with an early release of Pascal from Professor Nichlaus Wirth's ETH labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished reading `Bored of the Rings', a hilarious National Lampoon parody of the great Tolkien `Lord of the Rings' trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called `A'. When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:
for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-;P("_"+(*u++/8
To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension! We actually thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&T and other US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C! It has taken them 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate even marginally useful applications using this 1960's technological parody, but we are impressed with the tenacity (if not common sense) of the general Unix and C programmer. In any event, Brian, Dennis and I have been working exclusively in Pascal on the Apple Macintosh for the past few years and feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly bad programming that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago.''
Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&T, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time. Borland International, a leading vendor of Pascal and C tools, including the popular Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo C++, stated they had suspected this for a number of years and would continue to enhance their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C. An IBM spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a hastily convened news conference concerning the fate of the RS-6000, merely stating `VM will be available Real Soon Now'. In a cryptic statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of the Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, merely stated that P. T. Barnum was correct.
In a related late-breaking story, usually reliable sources are stating that a similar confession may be forthcoming from William Gates concerning the MS-DOS and Windows operating environments. And IBM spokesman have begun denying that the Virtual Machine (VM) product is an internal prank gone awry.