Slashdot Mirror
On Moving Toward Software Rentals
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an article about the emergence of a service-oriented model of software delivery, supported by the W3C, IBM, HP, and Microsoft.
They already have their acronyms down: WSDL (Web Services Description Language), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and WSFL (Web Services Flow Language).
The article primarily covers the three phases of negotiating, ending with actual service delivery."
How long before the said software gets "pirated" and publishers invokes DMCA?
I, for one, am terrified of this. In the first, if you are only renting the software, you do not really own it, so they can basically monitor you, or refuse access to the software if they want. Second, they have to have some way to monitor if the software is working or not, depending on your subscription time, which means either every (SUBSCRIPTION TIME) you'll have to reregister and reenter your code, or they will need to have access to your system (via the network, or in the real world) to reactivate it. Scary.
Wasn't it not long ago we have this ASP, which gave publishers a new way to sell and distribute software and software services? How is this ASP compared to the new Software Rentals scheme?
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
I don't know what the hell this article is all about. Software as a service EXISTS ALREADY and has been around for years! Ever heard of web-applications? Like, say WEB MAIL?!?!
Thin client = web browser.
We run a subscription-based software service, over the web. As the net gets faster, latency goes down, and web-apps will become more and more like desktop apps. Sure desktop apps will always be a bit faster, but for many applications an HTML interface works just fine.
All these new acronyms are just a waste of time. The only thing it will achieve is a PhD for whoever the idiot is that worked on those specs.
The ACM Queue is an interesting publication. Every month they turn it over to a vendor to promote their latest scheme. It's a brilliant advertising vehicle, where the magazine *is* the advertisement. For example, an article in the May issue on the benefits of TCP offload engines written by iReady, makers of TCP offload engines. In the same issue, an article on why text mining is replacing information retrieval, from a company who would like to sell you text mining software. And that's just me flipping through the first issue I could find laying about my home. I think everything between the covers of the ACM Queue should be ignored.
Package anyway you want it comes down to my not owning something I paid for.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There is this issue of proprietary formats, that only gets more serious now. OK you can keep your files, but how to read your .doc v9 document if Word v9 is only available on subscription, and you don't have a subscription?
Or what about you create a document, then switch to a totally different vendor (or stop using that very software) and a year or two later you want to read it again. Then you have to buy subscription only to read your own work??
Sure it can have some advantages, but without at least a freely downloadable reader for your own data it won't take off.
Wouter.
Even giving that that EULA's a binding contract, you have a perpetual right to use that version of Windows. This is what software companies want to see go away. Product activation was the first step in that direction, and "web services" and ASPs are the next.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Unless you can figure out how to make copyright apply to client-server transactions, the only way to prevent this sort of thing would be to use a EULA. (which would probably be not certified as open source)
All this stuff is nothing new. The GPL didn't collapse with Sun/DCE RPC or with CORBA. It won't collapse with Web Services.
But, as long as we're going to try to remain on topic, let's debate a bit:
The fact that this may require additional on- or off-site support to implement does not neccesarily mean it will be bad for business. Perhaps it will cost x amount more than current solution to implement due to its unweildy, complex, and buggy nature, but maybe it will produce x^2 more productivity and profits, meaning it both creates more IT jobs for people like me, and makes workers more productive. In fact, the product I support and program for does exactly that-- It's a CRM system. It rhymes with FoldMine. It certainly has its issues and implementation problems, but is incredibly successful if getting its users to sell more.
As for the Atlas, well, that's a reference to Atlas Shrugged. I am Atlas, and I shrug off the burden of holding up the world. Try reading the book if you're bored, but wear your tin-foil hat, or some other sort of crap filter, or swallow it with something more than a grain of salt. You'll need to reading anything written by Ayn Rand
Is there a need for a new Creative Commons license type that says "if you server services using this technology, I need to share the source"?
Why don't you just leave out all the verbal pussyfooting around, cut to the chase and say what you mean:
"If you want to try and sell GPLed stuff, you have to give it away as well."
The problem with buying software is that it puts the vendor in the sad position of adding stupid features and witholding bug-fixes in a hope of getting you to upgrade. Really you just wanted the old version with a few bugfixes. With rental, they can keep a small crew keeping it up to date, and we get to send them $20 a year or whatever to keep it running.
Indeed, customer-annoying moves like changing the file format seem much a feature of the sell-once model. With the rental model, they just want to keep you happy with the software as it is.
I must disagree, somewhat.
There is no direct linkage from the client to the server, simply an XML file that provides hints to the caller as to what structure to send messages. Hints that may or may not be ignored.
WSDL files that are hand-written may be released under a license, but what if the WSDL is machine generated by a runtime, such as the Apache one?
Nor is it mandatory to use WSDL to talk to a SOAP service. With any written documentation as to request structure I could perhaps rewrite my own WSDL/compose XML messages without any direct importing of the WSDL File. Or I could use the WSDL from a non GPL server and then rebind the client to a GPL instance. If they shared the same WSDL (and consistent behavour), I should not have to care what the licensing of the endpoint was.
-Steve Loughran, Apache Axis SOAP stack team.
ooh, this is a slippery slope.
...etc.
LGPL says 'linkage', with a model of linkage that works well with C++ (but not java, where everything is really a lib). GPL says 'any incorporation into a program', be it static or dynamic linkage.
To say my license applies to things that produce or consume data, even if separate or remote processes is a new extension. Certainly classic GPL doesnt cover it, but you could always write a new license to extend it.
If you take an existing GPL bit of code, you probably could wrap it with more code (GPL too), and publish a service interface that provides all the core functionality of the library, to other apps/processes. It is definitely a workaround. Which doesnt need SOAP, WSDL, all those fancy things -just boring old Corba would work fine, we have the Bonobo ORB to route stuff,
You run the risk of offending people who wrote the code you have wrapped, but I think that may be better than software licenses controlling who uses the data that apps produce.