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Hoboken, NJ vs. Giant Parking Robot
markwalling writes "Wired News is running a story about Hoboken, New Jersey's battles with robotic parking. A legal battle over the license had shut down the garage, essentially trapping hundreds of cars inside. Bill Coats has recommended that the parking garage be run off open source software: 'Vendees are going to become more sophisticated in the deals they enter into.' Coats even sees this as a driver of open source software. 'If you can get (open source software) you can't be shut down.' But that's harder to do in highly custom applications."
Coats even sees this as a driver of open source software. 'If you can get (open source software) you can't be shut down.' But that's harder to do in highly custom applications."
Er...BECAUSE it's open source, it's easier to customize. That's one of the major selling points.
Maybe someone missed that memo.
Subject change; This company is based in Clearwater, FL. Anybody else get a sneaking suspicion that this has something to do with scientology?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
This is a serious contender in the most non-understandable posts on slashdot ever. Aren't you supposed to be able to understand what it's about without reading the linked article?
Maan
--- It's not my fault this post looks redundant. I just type too slow.
Wait, let me get this straight. Local government has the police escort the company agents off the premesis because negotiations broke down. Basically, they figured "we already have the garage, so we don't need you any more. Bye, losers!"
And then complains because it breaks?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Substitute cars with documents and "robotic parking lot" with DRM and you have the same result.
Do we really want to be held up for ransom by some company that has locked our data into their container ?
See also this article where vital information is held up if you do not pay... the point is that it is my data, not somebody else data !!!! as if since I put some money in the bank then the bank can refuse to give my money back or to stop moving to another bank. (I hope I am not giving new ideas to banks here...)
The article on locking medical data is here
You get what you negotiate.
Like the garage itself, this software company has costs, too. There are wages, benefits, a building, taxes, and everything else that a business needs to survive.
It matters not if the city can afford it-- they agreed to it, then threw the guys out. Now it's a matter for civil litigation.
Who needs to be responsible for this gaffe? The city attorneys. I'll be I know what law school they went to, too.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Assuming the cars were trapped because the software recognized its license had expired and refused to operate (as opposed to merely being fragile and needing constant tweaking and babysitting by Robotic Parking staff), this was an INCREDIBLY stupid stunt to pull.
Absolutely, positively NOBODY with a gram of sanity is going to want to do business with them going forward. Smart move, guys.
The SMART way to timebomb the software (if it truly had to be done) would have been to program a soft landing... enabling the removal of cars already in the garage without restriction, and maybe even allowing new cars to be parked, but adding progressively longer delays (with obvious system messages, like "Delaying for 90 seconds due to software license expiration") to give the garage's owners time to digest the situation and react. Progressively annoying someone into action is one thing... holding them ransom with a metaphorical gun to their head is another matter entirely. I wouldn't be HAPPY with the former, but I'd be positively OUTRAGED over the latter.
Actually, I don't see this as an Open Source issue at all. I see this as bad coding, plain and simple. Why not just make it impossible to add vehicles to the garage when the license expires? That way, you can still retrieve the vehicles from the garage. Sounds like an obvious solution to me without affecting the "innocent". Would you park your car in any garage by this company knowing that they don't give a damn if your car gets stuck over a license dispute?
--
An elevator can only go up and down, but the Wonkavator can go sideways and slantways and longways and backways... and squareways and front ways and any other ways that you can think of.
That does not sound unreasonable. Thought it would depend on how big the garage is, how many cars per day, and the daily parking rate, $5500/month actually sounds rather inexpensive to me. To your other point, you would be hard pressed to find a full-time developer for $66K (fully burdened- including salary, health plan, sick days, 401k, etc.).
It's more than just development cost - think of the testing required. Because this is dealing with automobiles, which are most folks' second most valuable asset, the system has to be extremely reliable. That reliablity doesn't just happen. It requires planning, coding, testing to a much higher degree than the latest open source mp3 ripper. It doesn't necessarily come cheap. A vendor must be able to recoup its costs and make a profit, or else you won't get innovative solutions like this anymore.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
$5500 a month? For software to manage the garage? That's roberry, plain and simple.
Based on what? Do you know if they charged anything for the software up front? Perhaps the operators of the garage preferred to consider the software as part of their monthly overhead instead of as a large up-front purchase. And most likely they get some sort of NON-billed support time as part of that monthly tab. There's probably some other services tangled up in that, too - like off-site backups and mirroring.
When it somes down to brass tacks, this $5500 fee was cooked up arbitrarily by the Robotic.
What, but, say... $2500 would not have been arbitrary? How do you know that their closest competition isn't very close in price because of the costs and the business model? Do you consider your salary or hourly rate to be arbitrary?
That works out to $66,000 a year. They could pay their own devel to make software to keep that place running AND add new functionality as needed
No way. Not even close. Unless you're saying that $66k would pay for ALL of the overhead of keeping that person around. Salary. Benefits. Infrastructure. Dev platform. Backups. Documentation. And if so, the net take-home for a person whose entire overhead is $66k would be about $25k, tops. Is that the person that you think is going to be able to live in the mid-Atlantic area and, with good worldly experience, be trusted to keep that system in good shape, let along change it? Even if you could hire such a person for so little, why on earth would they stay? And then you have the cost of training and replacing and retaining someone else. $66k doesn't even come close.
don't think it's not cost effective to have in-house development in this case.
Start factoring in the disruptive costs of losing/firing someone, of mitigating risk so that only one person isn't dealing with the code that moves cars around and deals with people's money, and I think that's actually exactly wrong. I say this from the perspective of having been on both ends of buying/providing coding and integration services, and of being a consultant on projects before, during, and after all of this stuff finally gets looked at (by the end users) with a rational eye. There's more to it than you think.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yeah, open source is great and would have solved this problem, but the root of this problem isn't closed source software, it's an insanely stupid purchasing agreement on the part of Hoboken Government. The Wired article talked about open source and legislative remedies, but they nailed the solution to this problem with two words: buyer beware.
If Hoboken had the "Robotic employees" [glad "Robotic was capitalized there] escorted off the premises, presumably Hoboken owns this garage. They must have spent lord knows how much money to build this state-of-the-art robot parking garage they own, and then they plan to indefinitely lease the software by the month, and of course the whole thing is worse than worthless without it.
Who would buy something under those terms? I can't imagine making a major investment where someone else is in complete control of it and gets to re-bill me whatever they want whenever they want or else the whole thing becomes useless.
I don't know what Robotic's terms with their other customers are, but it makes sense to run this the way most things are run- either let Robotic build and run the whole thing, or else pay for the whole thing (including software) and own it all. Don't buy all of it but one critical, irreplaceable part, which you rent.
Sure, there are lots of people who get service contracts from the manufacturer and such, but there are generally alternate vendors available for these. This is like buying a car, and then leasing the copy-proof key for it from the dealer.
Their new deal is for just under $200,000 to lease a piece of software for three years. I don't know how complex this software is, and it's used in an application where it's critical that it not be buggy, but I bet there are a lot of programmers here who would love to develop a project they could lease to each user for $66,000/year, without ever actually selling a license. Especially if it would ruin the user's multi-million dollar investment if they ever stopped paying for the license.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I would no recommend going OS for a system that prone to critical failures, like large automated parking systems, for number of reasons:
1) Liability - any failure is at large your responsibility, developers can be knowingly negligent and not be liable in any way
2) Support - you OS product might not have any support, if it does its costs are not fixed and you have to tie part of your budget into emergency and contingency funds
3) Standard compliance - forget ISO or any safety/regulations compliance
4) Need for internal support - OS will require you to maintain dedicated personnel capable of troubleshooting the system
OS works well for non-critical wide-use applications but I don't see it moving into other areas in the near future.
What you're describing is not an example of bad coding, it's a bad design. We don't know what happened there for real. I've been involved with systems where the vendor could call in to the machine and add/remove features or disable the system depending on what the user was paying for. If that's in the design, then the coding could have been perfect.
Let me give you a practical metaphor for it all. Let's say that Joe Average is fresh out of college, got his new job, and needs a home. So his options are buy a home, or rent a home. Buying it costs waay too much, but Joe can rent a decent home for, say, $1000 per month. So he rents it, pays his $1000 for the first month, and moves in. The first month goes by and Joe decides "wth, I already have the house, why should I keep paying for it?" So he refuses to pay for the next month. He even calls the cops to escort the landlord out, when said landlord tries to negotiate getting his money, and proceeds to sue the landlord and paint him as a monster to the media. Only a monster could extort another $1000 out of Joe, under such threats as kicking him out of his home, obviously.
Do you get the idea that Joe is a complete cretin by now? Does it invoke thoughts along the lines of, "nobody can be _that_ stupid, dude. Everyone would know it doesn't work that way," perchance?
Because that's a literal analogy for what those guys tried to do with the robotics software. What Joe in my example does with the house, the municipality official did with the software. Literally.
The municipality basically _could_ have paid to develop the software and the garage from scratch (F/OSS or not), but I'd bet that it would have been a lot more expensive, took longer, and ran a non-zero risk of ending up over-budget and dragging for years past the deadline, leaving you with a garage that doesn't work. And I really mean a _lot_ longer, because you also have to thoroughly test it, review the code, etc, to be sure it doesn't do something extremely stupid. (E.g., you don't want it to malfunction and move an elevator while a car is only half-way in it, destroying the car in the process.) At that point, you can probably have it GPL'ed or whatever, since you paid for it from scratch.
Or you could do what they did, and buy an _almost_ off-the-shelf solution for a fraction of the price. (Yes, it's not "off the shelf" in the sense of buying it at Wal Mart like you could buy a copy of Office, but still, an existing solution. Or at least something that only needs some small changes, as opposed to starting from scratch.) At which point, you get to take whatever the heck license you can get for those money.
Furthermore, presumably to save some money, they only rented that software for X years. Then when the deadline went, the municipality basically thought "muahahaha, why pay some more when we already have the software? Look at all the money we could save by running the software without a license. Let's shaft the developpers instead." And they even literally call the cops to kick the developper's employees off the premises.
Which, sorry, is just unethical and stupid. I can't feel any empathy for them in that kind of situation.
Furthermore, then when the software stopped working without a valid license, they tried to villify the developpers in the media, as well as drag them to court. As if they had some sacred/constitutional right to run a garage with stolen software, and the developpers were such monsters to deny them this opportunity.
Does it sound like complete slimeballs by now? Because it sure as heck does to me. Imagine that someone ignores your license (GPL or whatever floats your boat), and then they sue _you_, and try to paint _you_ as some monster to the media for trying to enforce your license. That kind of complete sleazeballs.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Pretty much. I question why the City of Hoboken ever involved themselves with these people. It sounds like a real boondoggle; you assumedly pay for the garage/machinery, but then once you get it, you can't operate it yourself, you have to agree to let them come and "manage" the whole thing for you, forever.
And what do you do if they decide to raise their rates? You're S.O.L. -- if you don't like what they're going to charge you to manage your robotic garage, then your garage magically stops working.
It's like the ultimate no-bid contract. There can't ever be any competition for the operation of that garage, because only that one company can do it.
What a load of crap; if I were a resident who had my tax dollars spent on a lock-in like that, I'd be pretty annoyed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Not just that. It's more a matter of signing a bad contract. Why did the city sign a contract for subscription software licensing? Did the vendor not offer a perpetual license plus maintenance and support? You know if the software stops working, the whole garage becomes a useless pile of junk, right?
Let's compare this to a more mature but similar product, elevators. Elevators are controlled by computers too, but do you see people trapped in elevators over a contract dispute about software licensing?
I'd say it's a rather good design - for the vendor. What gives them more leverage, an empty garage or a garage full of trapped vehicles?
Ahh... Capitalism.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I see this as bad coding, plain and simple.
Bad coding means you run into trouble you didn't expect.
Creating trouble deliberately doesn't fall into this category. A worm that erases your hard disk is not automatically badly coded; it may be exemplary from a technical standpoint, just morally reprehensible.
In this case, it's ignorance on the city's part (they should know better), and stupidity on the vendor's part (they may never sell another system again). A smart vendor would give the customer a grace period, at least long enough to get people's cars off, possibly long enough to let the entire system be replaced. Only a profoundly foolish person lets his customers fail under any circumstance -- at least if he plans to stay in business.
If your software fails horribly, but you bend over backwards to help the customer, even if he's kicking you out, you walk out of the situation with your reputation for integrity and decency intact. And you need that reputation.
This is what I say over and over and over about open source vs. proprietary. Let's set aside ideology for a minute and talk pure pragmatism. When you "buy" proprietary software, you don't buy it, you license it under the vendor's terms. This is a very obvious and practical point that seems to get missed in discussions of software "wanting to be free" or whether a bunch of apparently people (of whom it is strongly implied are likely to be grungy, pot smoking hippies) can stand up to my gold plated world class proprietary development team.
Put another way, when you "buy" proprietary software, it's like getting married to the vendor. You'd better have complete confidence in the vendor, or a damned good pre-nup agreement.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
>IANAL, but it could be a legal liability
If just one of those cars is a rental, the exposure becomes enormous.
The argument that tries to make this situation distinct from auto theft would
be very interesting to hear.
A legal phrase is often used, "in lieu of liquidated damages" that applies there directly.
Don't do the deal if you don't want things to stop freaking cold as frozen carbon dioxide should you decide not to pay. This gives me an exercise-able lean on what you do. I think it's a great thing. Don't like it?
Then don't blow your integrity by purposefully not honoring the contract.
This is very simple. The city shouldn't have signed the deal, in my estimation. And I 100% sympathize with the developers. It's not extortion- it's an inured obligation. There is a huge difference. The ends-justify-the-means is bad policy and poor integrity. It's also cowardly.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If it's only 2 square miles, why would you need a car?
Stop paying your web hosting provider? No more web page. This is not that diferent.
Think of it this way: it's one thing for the local school board to not pay the electricity bill and have the school shut down. It's another thing if all the doors are electric and you now have hundreds of children trapped inside.
(And with that statement, I have violated Lovejoy's Law in being the first person to raise the "Won't someone please think of the children?" line of reasoning.)
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
My Slashdot user ID has nothing to do with the topic discussed. Yeah, I just signed up to Slashdot because there finally happens to be something relevant to my community (other than pure tech/geek talk). You may want to call the blog random, but there is nothing like it in Hoboken. It's a place where people can go to discuss anything they want to about Hoboken, plus a crime map where they can see what is happening in their neighborhood. Yeah some people replied more than once. That's the point of a discussion. There were more like 17-18 commenters on it, fyi. We live in a small mile-square town. What do you want? We get 50,000 visitors a month, and the site is only about 4 months old. The funny thing is, this whole Slashdot discussion about the Robotic Garage pretty much overlooked the real reason there were problems. It wasn't OSS or anything of that caliber, much to your disappointment. Not everything can be accessible via the internet, nor can it be downloaded and developed for free. You can't apply your "knowledge" of technology to each and every custom application worldwide. Automated and specialized installations require special tools and software. Our town just screwed it up. There were PERSONALITY differences between the government and the application supplier/operator. If we had more sensible officials, they'd keep the original developers on board, especially since it's a very new kind of technology. The taxpayers now have to suffer both from the convenience factor of a less-than optimally running garage AND more cost. A lose-lose end result for sure. What's your blog by the way Derek?
You may think I'm just promoting the site, but it is relevant to the topic at hand. That's what the internet and hyperlinks are for. To connect you to further sources of information. But I guess Slashdot is filled with pretentious people? Would it be different if I linked to a third party news article? Does my affiliation with the site really have anything to do with it? The fact that I've been personally involved with this Robotic Parking situation, AND have my car parked in there, I guess I'm a bit more of an expert on this issue than you are. What do you call someone who just has an opinion about everything? A loudmouth.