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."

Comments

"Service Delivery"

[Gothmolly]

will consist of deployment of a crappy too-thick-to-be-thin client, with poor response time, and broken widgets. The vendor will claim that it is due to either 1) client-side misconfigurations, or 2) unanticipated variations in the environment, both of which will be ironed out via a Professional Services contract accompanying the software "delivery". The end result will be the creation of numerous roles at the client's expense to "manage" and "coordinate" the software delivery, frustration at the end-user level, raises and kudos for the middle managers who jumped on the bandwagon, and fat wallets on the part of the shovelware designers.

Re:"Service Delivery"

[bsharitt]

There's no use in fighting it. They've already got acronyms. When the acronyms come out it's all over.

Re:"Service Delivery"

[iamatlas]

The end result will be the creation of numerous roles at the client's expense to "manage" and "coordinate" the software delivery

So....basically it will create more jobs in the IT sector. If software and implementation were uniformly perfect for all applications and systems, I know that I and many others would be out of a job. That being the case, I for one welcome our new subscribtion-based overlords.

Re:"Service Delivery"

[fireman sam]

"So....basically it will create more jobs in the IT sector"

Who said they will be local jobs?

Remember when the software industry took off. All those support jobs just appeared. But where are they now?

Re:"Service Delivery"

[awing0]

I don't think it has to be that way. The applications could be installed and run locally, but with unique serial numbers or "cd-keys" that query remote servers for your account info. Pretty much in the same way application activation works now. Application reports four hours of usage, you get billed on your account for it. With longhorn on the way with all its DRM crappiness, companies would feel safer deploying applications in this manner, I'm sure.

Re:"Service Delivery"

[flacco]

will consist of deployment of a crappy too-thick-to-be-thin client, with poor response time, and broken widgets.

or it could be a simple web app with some enhancements/extensions as envisioned by the whatwg, behaving as browser users expect it to behave, designed around internet response times, and thus providing response times that browser users are accustomed to.

currently i'm moving a client from a godforsaken ms-access app that i wrote many years ago to a web-based application that i intend to host on my own hosted virtual server. no more installation issues to deal with, no more relinking tables every time i ship a new version, no more ms-access-on-the-client requirement to deal with... when i have a new version ready i just upload it to the server and we're done.

i *am* looking forward to whatwg-like extensions, though, because the user interface is taking a step backward, from the user's perspective. whatwg should address some of those shortcomings.

The vendor will claim that it is due to either 1) client-side misconfigurations, or 2) unanticipated variations in the environment,

further argument for web applications. but again - must... improve... interface... !

both of which will be ironed out via a Professional Services contract accompanying the software "delivery". The end result will be the creation of numerous roles at the client's expense to "manage" and "coordinate" the software delivery, frustration at the end-user level, raises and kudos for the middle managers who jumped on the bandwagon, and fat wallets on the part of the shovelware designers.

unless a competitor comes along and says "why are you messing around with all that complicated proprietary not-thin-enough client technology for? here is my alternative, which is standards-compliant and requires only a web browser to use." (granted, perhaps a mozilla-based browser, but you'd just be doing them a favor anyway if they're not using one already).

go whatwg, go!

Re:"Service Delivery"

[iamatlas]

I probably should have prefaced my comment with ::insert tongue firmly into cheak::

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

Re:"Service Delivery"

[fireman sam]

So, when do you fly out to India? Or will you just commute internationally every day.

Re:"Service Delivery"

[icknay]

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.

Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[rpbailey1642]

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.

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[AresTheImpaler]

I didn't think about the problem of having to monitor if the software is working or not.
Other than that I think these companies seem to be accepting the fact that nobody wants to pay high prices for software that is going to become obsolete in matter of months. At least that is the impression I got. Now that they realize that nobody want to pay, they need to find a better strategy of making money. First of all, subscription might be OK for a lot of non-geeks that do not care about their software not being theirs. They just want software that can help them with what ever they are doing.

Wouldn't a suscription method mean that we are going into the direction of a free software method in which we only pay for support and other related services?

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[NanoGator]

Okay, that's 'the glass is half empty' reaction. What about 'the glass is half full'?

a.) We all know that software promises are iffy at best. When you need to get a job done, and software promises to do it, it really is no guarantee, is it? Demo ware is sometimes helpful, but few companies do it right. (I'd like to nod in Macromedia and Alias's general direction for making their demo ware work right.) Basically, what they want you to do is buy their software and ... well.. you're stuck with it if it doesn't do what you ask.

My company recently ran into this. There's an app called ZBrush used for texturing 3D models. It has some really cool features that make organic modelling and texturing quite pleasant. (You've seen this software's work in the latter 2 of the LotR movies.) Unfortunately, it's a ~$500 app, and they haven't released a demo yet. We ended up getting it after watching a live demo at Siggraph, but man, that was a happy coincidence in timing. If we could have 'rented' the software for a week to evaluate it, we'd have been a lot happier.

b.) Always up to date! Imagine not needing to shell out hundreds of bucks for an upgrade. As long as you're subscribing, you should (in theory, anyway) be using the most up to date software. Done right, this could mean virtually instantaneous security updates, for example. No more people lagging behind with older software perpetuating the problem. No more "I can't open that file!" Etc.

c.) Mobile licenses. More and more companies are trying to prevent people from installing software on multiple machines. Sadly, those of us with laptops and home stations to do work on get bitten. I'll go back to ZBrush's example. They have a locking scheme kind of like Windows'. It id's itself to your hardware, and that's it, that's the only software you can unlock to. Unless I call them up and ask them politely (and I've heard they are quite happy to do this...) to unlock my software, I can only use it on the one station. Doh. If done right, I should just be able to log in to a server and say "I wanna use this", it'll check that nobody else is using it, and allow it to run. Sort of like how ICQ works.

d.) Spend less money. I'll use ZBrush as an example, again. First off, I'm reasonably certain that in order to make the subscription scheme work, it has to be competitive with the cost of buying the software outright. I've heard this a number of times before. (Remember, this is 'the glass half full' comparison, not a prediction) My company is going to reach a point where ZBrush will probably be inactive for a long time. If we could cancel/suspend the subscription then, at the end of a year, we could potentially spend less than we did to buy it a month ago.

Now, I want to reiterate something here. This is simply an optimist's view. Who knows how it'll play out? The worst that'll happen is nobody will want to use it. The best is that we get an experience better than we have today. Works for me.

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[TheGavster]

Some people upgrade every year, but a lot don't. I bought Office 97 6 years ago, and still use it as the office suite on my Windows machines. At $75 for the copy, that's like $1/month.

I also see the horror scenario, "oh crap, my internet connection just went down, my registration runs out in 6 hours, must have this paper done by tomorrow". I put my faith in things that I own that cannot be taken away.

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[Donny Smith]

>Wouldn't a suscription method mean that we are going into the direction of a free software method in which we only pay for support and other related services?

It would if you think it would.

Joe Looser used to pay $90 for bundled Windows XP OEM Edition before, now he'll pay $10/month with a special 25% discount if he buys 12 months at once.
And IBM won't even allow you to buy less than 6 months of service...

All in all - the same shit in a different package.

Some people will feel great about it, others will frown on it (especially those who used to get pirated client-side software which later becomes server-side only).

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[TheGavster]

How about this scenario: You do a bunch of work for a major client. Right before release, your provider tells you that the version of ZBrush you were using is no longer offered. Oh, by the way, the files generated by the last version won't work with the new one. Sorry 'bout that. Conclusion: you're screwed, you no longer have the option of running the old files on the old version until you've migrated, etc. And don't tell me that software vendors don't break backwards compatibility all the time, either.

By the way, ZBrush now offers a demo: http://pixologic.com/support/contents.html

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[drawfour]

First, you never really owned any software anyway. When you "buy" the software, you really purchase a LICENSE to use it.

That said, there are lots of details that would need to be worked out to get this working properly. For example, I would not expect that EVERY time you use it, you must access a server (this is assuming the software is actually client-side and not a web service running on a server somewhere). Would be quite hard to use Word (for example) on an airplane with no internet access. So I would expect there would be a one-time activation for a period of time (1 month, 6 months, whatever). Anytime you have internet access, it checks for updates and installs them if necessary. Otherwise, until the end of the term is nearing, it never prompts you again. If you choose to extend your license, it indicates to the server and your account/credit card/etc... is charged for the extension. I'm sure an over-the-phone activation scheme can be used for times when no internet access is available.

Other issues are things like prices... What happens if the company decides that $50 for xxx months is not enough, and they need to increase to $65? There needs to be assurances that the rental fee will not increase and can only go down with time, or some such. Nowadays, when you purchase software, you can use it regardless of how many updates there are -- or even if it's no longer supported. Try THAT with software "rentals". So the consumer needs to be protected from pricing schemes like that.

There will also be issues with software running on multiple machines -- how many machines do the rental licenses allow to run concurrently? While I realize that today, this is largely an honor-system (even Windows XP allows you to install it 3 times on different machines until it locks you out and requires a phone call), but if they try to enforce that, it will require internet access to verify you can run the software. And what happens if a machine is running it, but crashes (ya know, the BSOD or lock-up type, or even the network access goes down), and it cannot update the server to indicate it's no longer running. You try to run on another machine that does have network access and it thinks it can't. I'm sure there would be a timeout period where if the server hasn't been refreshed for a period of time, it thinks it's ok to run the other app.

I'm sure there are many more issues. It's not an easy problem.

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, I hope that you are correct in that free-market forces will be able to determine what is best. The real question is whether they will even be allowed to. My own feeling (I know, half-empty, doom and gloom) is that the free-market (i.e., the user base) will have little say in the matter. There is so much desire to maximize profit (as in "squeeze water from a rock") among big software companies that I fear the idea of a total end-user lock-in is irresistible. And as broadband penetration becomes more and more significant (apparently this year the number of high-speed installations exceeded the number of dial-ups) this scheme will become even easier to foist upon us.

Personally, I detest the idea of automatic updates. I don't want my software changing until I have reviewed whatever the new version offers and have made a considered decision to upgrade. It would be hell on a corporation if Microsoft decided to "autoupgrade" all of its users and suddenly all the user menus changed. Nobody would be able to do anything and productivity would come to a screeching halt. That's an extreme example, of course, but, honestly, most users would rather the software they have simply work in the manner to which they've become accustomed and not be "upgraded" (i.e., change) all the time forcing yet another learning curve. How many of us really use any more than 1% of all the stuff built into, say, Microsoft Office? And if we did learn everything it can do, by the time we have the latest version will have changed so much that our efforts would have been wasted. Office is so complex and so full of features and is such a continually moving target from the user's perspective that having it mutate even more often would hardly be perceived as an improvement.

And all of this "software as a subscription" business depends entirely upon a reliable Internet (ha) and a software supplier that is able to effectively build and maintain the required network infrastructure. Microsoft has shown, time and time again, that it cannot be trusted to manage a big network: for example, their instant messaging services have had repeated failures on a global scale. I, for one, would not be happy if my company was unable to even send an email because Microsoft's subscription management servers went offline for a while. And that will happen, you know that. And what happens when a company suffers an Internet outage and can't get access to the server-side component of their critical business applications? No, there are definite advantages to maintaining ownership of important software and being as independent as possible of the vendor.

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[interiot]

Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but all those apply to Google as well:

• You don't own it
• They can monitor you
• They can refuse access if they want

While software rental increases the amount of potential pain for users, it's still also be possible for a company to do a very good job, both technically and ethically.

Re:Rentals? As in, no ownership?

[Cylix]

This isn't new.... not by a long shot.

It's odd that when someone puts some marketing spin on the practice... it actually gets noticed.

I deal with several software packages designed for POS and accounting. They each have a time out period and a new code must be entered to keep it running.

It's a support + software functionality rolled into one. I don't like it, but the implementations already there.

I am currently writing my own point of sale/accounting software package for video store rentals. I'm not sure if we plan to GPL the project and charge for support later on.

Currently, it's an in house project with the possibility of public release. Right now, our aim are just to get it working.

Nice idea, but...

[bblazer]

This sounds like a great idea. There have been times when I needed a piece of software just for a one or two time use, and the only things out there for my particular need had high license fees. However, what bothers me is that MS is involved with it. I am worried that they will make the technology OS specific, and finally get a foothold in the internet 'standards' (read MS standards) that they have been trying to do for so long.

Licensing for Service Delivery.

[ron_ivi]

This seems an interesting hole in the GPL - use GPL'd technology, but only deliver thing parts of the client to the users; and keep all your GPL-tech-using-yet-proprietary stuff on your server. Since you never "distribute" the server side code, seems it is your to do whatever you want with it.

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"?

I think no existing license covers that need very well today.

Re:Licensing for Service Delivery.

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

You misunderstand the GPL. It's far stronger than that:

"If you want to try and sell GPLed stuff, you have to give it and the source code that created it away as well."

And what the parent proposed is stronger still:

"If you want to try and sell or server services with [this-hypothetical-license]ed stuff, you have to give it and the source code that created it away as well."

AFAIK, there's no such license that covers this case yet.

WIM

[bobblebob]

>They already have their acronyms down: WSDL (Web >Services Description Language), UDDI (Universal >Description, Discovery, and Integration), and WSFL >(Web Services Flow Language). And WIM Who Ivited Microsort

Re:WIM

[Geburah]

And WIM Who Ivited Microsort

When I saw the word "Microsort" I all of a sudden got this mental picture of tiny yellow guys with antennas, about the size of thimbles, called "Booquards" working relentlessly under strict watch from the bigger general Booquards. They needed to hurry and sort various nick nacks. The intergalactic demand for nick nacks is quite high these days, and the distribution of them is very important. Though, Baglork, the first yellow booquard I imagined, is sad because he has to work on his birthday. All he wants to do is go home and enjoy a nice bowl of squishy-o's and watch his favorite TV show. Thats his favorite thing to do. Poor little guy.

What could possibly be offered?

[MustEatYemen]

Everything I want for computer use is pretty much existing in a state I already own (Office, Visual C), or is being developed by a more open/donaiton system (Firefox,Thunderbird,Filezilla,Sunbird). There's a limited amount of applications I would LIKE, and none that I NEED, that don't really exist yet. So why in hell would I pay a monthly service fee for word? When I believe Word 97 was just fine, and now instead prefer OpenOffice more(majority of the time I just use notepad.exe).

The only avenue I see that could possibly get away with rental systems is the game industry, but only if they're rental prices severally undercut store prices. (Halflife 2?). That's the only area where there's consitently a new killer app that is needed. Not exactly IBM's home turf. Mircosoft on the other hand...

Bah, screw the entire thing, just disrupte w/ Bittorrents and Coral, and ask for donations.

Application Service Provider

[usefool]

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?

Re:Application Service Provider

[chiph]

Software Rentals was tried in the late 80's, but got squashed by the BSA and Microsoft, who were more interested in sales and upgrades, and were very concerned about piracy (think about all the people who rent a DVD from Blockbuster, rip their own copy, and return it never to rent it again). I think Beagle Brothers was one of the resellers that tried it... could be wrong (someone correct me if they know).

The authors talk convincingly about the price negotiation that might occur at the time of the service being delivered -- This implies that SOA will become part of a hyper-capitalistic market economy, where every time you want to spell-check your document, you would pay a different price, due to supply & demand on the supplier's systems. Or perhaps their CEO is sitting at his desk, clicking the "raise price" button so he can make his beach house payment.. ;-)

I'm not so convinced about their arguments -- one big assumption they make is that one service provider is much like any other, and that the API to each service is identical (i.e. no cost to changing service providers). I seriously doubt this will happen in practice ... each supplier will probably have their own, incompatible API. Maybe over the long term a standard may arise (upon which it truly becomes a commodity), but that would require an 800-lb gorilla to set a standard.

Think about what this requires in the way of authentication & billing: For every provider you may want to use, you have to establish some credentials with them so they know how to charge you. It'd have to be a combination of something like Liberty Alliance or MS-Passport, combined with a micropayments scheme. This billing system would require it's own API, that both the user and the service supplier would have to support. Uh-oh, things just doubled in complexity!

I'm not saying such a thing won't come about -- I've been in the industry too long to discount such things -- but I think it's highly unlikely given the obstacles.

Chip H.

Disclaimer: I work at an ASP. Profitable and cash-flow positive!

What is it 2001 all over again?

[Asprin]

I thought the market already rejected this idea!

Oh well, even if they didn't, I can't see this approach finding any more than a niche market because for commodity software, the price has to be low enough to outweigh the benefits of ownership.

Nobody is going to pay $150/year to rent MS Office Pro when OpenOffice is free to own. $30/year, maybe, but then MS has to make a decision about whether that price is too low to be worthwhile. Actually, at $30/year *I* have to wonder if it's worth it, but then I can't stand the last few version of office because of all the annoying "non-features" I have to turn off to get actual work done.

Web applications anyone?

[SlashdotMeNow]

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.

Dequeue ACM Queue

[Jeffrey Baker]

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.

Software architecture term, not business model

[boatboy]

SOA refers to a method of software architecture that is en vouge- not just a sneaky business model as the post suggests. I'm sure some businesses will jump on the SOA bandwagon for the idea of subscriber-based income, but those that do so for that reason alone will fail.

Web Services, WSDL, etc., all parts of implementing SOA, are essentially ways to provide software services via some network transport (typically HTTP). This makes sense for alot of things. For example, integrating inventory systems in real time. In days gone by, Company A would provide some random way for Company B to access it's inventory/price sheet. Text files, spreadsheets, EDI, etc. All SOA does is apply a machine-readable contract to the process. It says "this server will answer requests that look like ABC with data that looks like XYZ." WSDL, Web Services, etc. are all just about defining that "contract" to cover things like security, data types, etc.

Ironically, this allows for more diversity in the actual implementations. It doesn't matter if your service is provided on a $20,000 HP/W2K3 box running IIS or a $200 Linux box running Apache- as long as it provides a description of it's service, others can consume it- again using whatever language they choose. There are already implementations for most of these standards for Java, PHP, Perl, .NET, C++, and many other languages.

So, put up the tin foil, this isn't a massive conspiracy to get you to pay each time you open your "word processor service." It's just a better way to provide data services where they make sense.

Ah yes! Finally!

[st0rmshad0w]

I for one am all over this, please please please let the operational state of my crappy ISP's routers determine whether or not I can get any work done!

"Sorry boss, I can't get that report to you cuz some part of the internet's down."

Re:Ah yes! Finally!

[gcaseye6677]

This brings up an interesting point. What if Microsoft, or some other large vendor of commonly used software, went to the subscription model and someone DDOS'd the authentication servers (kind of like what happend to WindowsUpdate)? How much money would they and their clients lose as a result of everyone being locked out of their software? This is too much of a single point of failure for people to be comfortable with.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[Mr_Tulip]

I have a hard time swallowing the marketing spin about the customer benefits of this service-oriented approach to software sales. This model is simply a steady revenue stream for software vendors, who will then no longer have to justify to people the advantages of upgrading to the latest version of their software - they simply switch off the software if discontinue payments. As a software developer, I admit this is a deal is fantastic, there's basically no downside, just an upside. As a customer, I much prefer the service oriented approach of the commercial open-source establishment - get the software free, and pay for training and support. Vertical market software developers have been coming up with these schemes for years. There's simply no way a vertical market software developer can survice if they sell software only, as their customer base is much narrower than off-the-shelf software.

I do not get it.

[angel'o'sphere]

What has UDDI, WSDL and WSFL to do with renting of software?
No I did not RTFA ....
The poster of the story should have made his story better to get me to RTFA ...
WSDL ^= CORBA IDL for XML RPC aka SOAP
UDDI ^= universal directory and discovery service, aka a phonebook or DNS for SOAP
WSFL ^= web sergvice flow language aka process or work flow definition for web services or web based applications

That all is TECHNIQUE,
renting is a BUSINESS MODEL.

Most of the poster to this article seem not to see that difference.

angel'o'sphere

The final stage of intellectual property law?

[ShatteredDream]

The first step for the corporate elite in the 1870s-1930s was to try to remove the idea from the public consciousness that natural law is a legitimate basis for our legal system. Then it began to push for a steady expansion of intellectual property law into previously unacceptable domains. Originally patents were very hard to get, you had to produce something truly unique, now you can patent business models!

This is all part of a general push away from an ownership society to a corporatist renter society. Capitalism is not to blame here, fascism is, because it is capitalist doctrine that is directly at odds with copyright holders. Capitalism gave us the concept of a government protecting everyone's property rights and not regulating most aspects of the economy to ensure that no class of business had an advantage over another. It was fascism that gave birth to the idea of controlling the economy to "protect industry."

The software rental model is intended to be the final blow to the idea that customers should have a property right in software. Pseudo-capitalists can come out all they like about how "choice" is what really matters, but choice is utterly irrelevent in every respect when basic property rights are not an option anymore. When no one can own their software in any way, to any degree, the difference between competitors becomes inherently pathetic and trite, just like the major parties in 2000 and 2004.

So what happens? Software companies use patents to protect their business model where copyright law isn't enough, by going after upstarts offering an ownership-friendly model.

But what many geeks and nerds won't get out of this, is that this battle has been raging for not a few decades but for about 144, the first battle being the American Civil War. The public schools frequently gloss over three very curious facts about the Civil War, because that would make Abraham Lincoln look like the most fascist stooge in American history:

• The south seceded over the tariff, even Karl Marx said that the tariff, not slavery, was the issue.
• The founders of the CSA, when you read a bit of their writings, were rabidly anti-corporation by the standards of their day, and despised the system of "internal development" which was basically corporate welfare that was fueled by the tariff.
• Over 600,000 Americans, by today's population about 4,200,000-5,000,000 died in a war to protect the rights of corporations. Kinda hard to argue it was to protect slaves, and not corporations, seeing as how it came hot on the heels of the dred scott ruling.

Now does it become clearer, when you consider the almost 1 and a half century history of this fight, why the federal government really is a government of the people, by the people and for the corporations? Look at the push for things like UCITA, the goal is to essentially in the long run whittle down and destroy the state contract laws and nationalize them, so that the states, the governments much closer to you and your wishes, and thus further from corporate control than the feds, cannot protect you from the monied interests.

There never has been a conspiracy, because the elite has always had the audacity to operate in the open. For the last several decades, they have unabashedly eschewed any pretense of being Adam Smith-style capitalists and their economic model draws upon a more sophisticated, and moderately liberal version of Mussolini's fascist doctrines. What do you think, "protecting and advancing American economic interests" really means? Adam Smith would call it that vile system of Mercantilism which was an influence on socialism and at odds with laisez faire capitalism.

People have asked me why I vote libertarian, it is because they are capitalists. The party was born and bred from an ideological pedigree concerned with the minimization of the elite's power and influence and the preservation of an ownership society

Re:The final stage of intellectual property law?

[the-build-chicken]

You deserve a medal

I can rent him one if you like?

Re:Um...I thought that according to the EULA...

[base3]

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.

Re:How about reading my own files after cancelling

[starrsoft]

*sigh*

Please take off the tin foil hat; it is causing brain wave interference.

"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?"

Do you think that this new model will automatically kill Open Source? You'll "read your .doc v9" with Open Office.

"without at least a freely downloadable reader for your own data it won't take off"

What's to say that they won't create a free viewer? They have one with the owned software model already. With the rented software model it would be even easier: go to a website to open your document; nothing to download.

Re:Digital medium is NEVER secure

[cbreaker]

What in the hell are you talking about? Not only is this completely off-topic but you're also very ill informed.

*At least* if you're going to post something like this, you'd have the brains to actually read up a little bit on it. Not only are you wrong about Mozilla using "obsolete Netscape 4.x code" (as netscape is based on Mozilla, NOT the other way around) but you're also wrong about IE being the standard for "all web protocols" - no, IE is the standard for "all microsoft-only protocols."

Get your facts straight, dumbshit.

Article is unrelated to software as a service

[YU Nicks NE Way]

I was really puzzled by the three acronyms used in the summary. WSDL, UDDI, and WSFL are related to web services, not software rentals. They refer to the protocol negotiation, server discovery, and work flow handling steps in a contract negotiation, respectively. WSFL, in particular, is of no use whatsoever in the software rental model.

Someday, maybe one of the editors will read the submissions before they post them? I'm paying for their services by accepting their ads -- keep this up, and I'm blocking the ads here.

Wow, I'm Impressed

[finkployd]

Slashdot just ran a story to the effect of "SOAP exists" complete with brand "new acronyms" that are several years old.

Finkployd

Fundametal Flaw in Software Service/Rental

[JGski]

The fundamental flaw in the software service/rental model is that it is being rammed down the throats of software consumers by software producers, which might have a snowball's chance iff such vendors have absolute (i.e. monopoly) market power. None truly do; not even Microsoft can say that.

The problem is service/rental is that you become beholden to the service, thus you incur a hidden cost due to risk because you could run the risk of losing access to your own data or processes if you can't make the monthly payments. In the non-rental mode, s/w to control your data and processes become sunk cost at worst with ready substitution of the status quo in lieu of new purchases (expenses). There is no compensation for this added cost for the user in the rental model, while the producer is gaining a cashflow series that was originally a single transction - software rental == higher NPV for the seller and lower NPV for the buyer, making it a simple and audacious market power grab.

Rightly, buyers will expect some compensation (I've yet to hear a single argument s/w rentals that really holds water) to justify switching. Otherwise you can expect the creation of non-rental substitutes (Open Source?) or the creation of black markets.

JG

An easier hole in the GPL

[metamatic]

There's an easier way to bypass the GPL. You release the code, but make it rely on data files which are proprietary, copyrighted, and trademarked.

This is already done by everyone from id Software to the Mozilla project.

Re:An easier hole in the GPL

[LilMikey]

Eh? I wasn't under the impression that id was supposed to release their game engines under the GPL? Just because it runs on Linux doesn't mean it must GPLed. So it's not really a hole when it didn't have to be licensed that way in the first place. This is just another example of a commercial piece of software on Linux.

I also don't really see how Mozilla is a bad GPL citizen. There are scores of derivative projects and the rendering engine can be used by anybody. How are they 'bypassing the GPL?'

I think what a lot of people are worried about are people using GPLed code in a web-services type of setting where the executable isn't distributed or run by the client but the client still recieves the benefit of the end result. Since no binary is distributed no source is distributed and GPLed code is locked up in a proprietary application.

For some apps renting makes sense

[Timbotronic]

How useful is:

• A virus scanner without regular updates?
• Payroll software without the current tax formulas?
• Legal software without the latest laws and precedents?
• "Glass cockpit" avionics without current traffic info, frequencies, weather etc?

Anything that requires regular updates lends itself to a rental model. Doesn't mean you have to ASP the whole thing. And btw, what's new here? Who would want to rent an app like Excel that's used frequently but rarely changes? Whatever Microsoft might want, there's still enough competition from previous versions and OSS to stop that from happening.

Re:One possibility

[Trejkaz]

That's completely different. In web services, you need the WSDL file in order to actually access the service at all. It becomes something like a library which you use to access the service. A web browser served from an Apache server... first of all, Apache isn't GPL, and second of all, the page isn't required to implement your web browser.

WSDL does not propagate the GPL.

[steve_l]

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.

Re:I didn't say it would stop abuse!

[steve_l]

ooh, this is a slippery slope.

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, ...etc.

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.