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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."
Another great example for adopting F/OSS. Somene get on this. CARS WANT TO BE FREE!
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
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
In this case, open source software is completely irrelevant. Hoboken paid for a company to build the garage, install all of the hardware and the software. Hoboken didn't write software, or buy software from some company other than the one with the tech to set up the garage. They bought the package from this company, and the company uses proprietary software. Hoboken couldn't use their own software even if they wanted to. Saying that "open source" software would help in a situation like this is about as relevant as saying that if the city's citizens only used flying cars, then this situation wouldn't happen.
With the optional plug-in, the garage can become Carparkatron, defender of Hoboken.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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.
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