Slashdot Mirror
Blackberry Blackout Threat to Software as Service?
TheIndifferentiate writes "In light of how CEOs are reacting to a possible court injunction which could shutdown their RIM BlackBerry service, what impact do you think this will have on the 'Software as a Service' business model? The conventional wisdom in some commercial software corners has it that the threat of patent litigation should stop Open Source Software development in its tracks. If my business depends on an OSS application, and it gets shut down, I can potentially go on about my business as I have the executables and wouldn't have to stop using them until someone came knocking at my door. If an SaaS application gets shut down and my business depends on it, I'm dead in the water. Seems like one of the prime arguments against OSS also takes out SaaS too. Rhetorically speaking, how could a commercial ISV in good faith talk any business out of an OSS application and into an SaaS application?"
I've thought about this, and it won't work using webmail. Here's why:
1) For starters, it's more than email. It syncs Outlook contacts and calendar items, but yes - I know there are plenty of PDA/phone alternatives for those functions - but it's nice they sync wirelessly. If you make a change in Outlook, it syncs through the air. Very cool.
2) You said Webmail, which is nice when you turn it on and login to check yourself. The BB is nice because you don't have to check, it checks for you. It shows a message icon when you get a new one. It can also ring, vibrate, or light up when you get a new message. No webmail app is going to do that for you.
3) You can then email people just like you can with Outlook directly from your Address book / contacts, which I already mentioned sync wirelessly.
If somebody can come up with a good alternative to BB, let me know - I'm all ears.
What's missed here is that NTP was formed largely because RIM was a first-rate jackass company.
Among NTP's primary shareholders are the actual inventors of the patents. Or perhaps I should say "were", as one of them recently died: RIM kept this bottled up in court that long. These inventors produced actual products at early computer tradeshows which ran email over a sophisticated wireless protocol to a PDA-like device. Sound familiar? The earliest such patents were filed in 1994 based on inventions several years earlier. Let's put this into context: the earliest Newton was in 1993, and the earliest similar device I am aware of was a PCMCIA pager card that could be put into the Newton circa 1995, enabling it to receive (but not send) messages over a pager network. This combination of technologies was both novel and original, and the inventors didn't just make them up to sell patents. But their company foundered.
Then came along RIM. RIM started selling the Blackberry and then started suing the daylights out of its competitors. Surely you remember this. RIM's nickname on The Register was "Lawsuits In Motion". When the original patent holders got wind of what RIM was selling, they realized it was largely a duplication of their patent. And so they contacted RIM and told them they were infringing. That's when RIM refused to return their calls. For a year.
This is not how ordinary companies operate. If someone owns a valid patent on your work, you don't refuse to even talk to them. So NTP was formed basically to force RIM to actually talk.
Legal battle ensues, and out come the slashdotters. NTP's patents are invalid and are getting all knocked down (um, the lynchpin ones are not). NTP is just a holding company to go after people (um, NTP was made to financially enable the original inventors to go after a specific company which was flagrantly violating their patent). Patents are evil (um, you know why patents exist, right? You're familiar with the evil that was the Trade Guild? No, I'm not talking about Star Wars).
RIM was repeatedly reprimanded in court by the judge for all sorts of obnoxious actions. And to top it off, RIM went to congress to ask them to override the judge because they'd given free blackberries to congress, and now wanted to claim that shutting RIM down would put the nation's security in jeopardy. I am not pulling your leg. Only Jack Abramoff could pull off a lobbying stunt more inappropriate.
And now the courts have sided ... against the slashdotters! How could the Supremes have not been reading the /. comment stream? What were they thinking?
Short answer: RIM is a nasty, obnoxious company which violated patents and sued people's pants off for things they didn't own. They got what they deserve. Too bad one of the original inventors didn't live long enough to see a dime from them.