'The Autodesk File' redux - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2017, 12:51:26 am
content: I'll fork this off from the thread about theEAGLE license agreement, because it's more of a general observation than a comment about that particular subject. TL;DR: the founder of Autodesk could probably have told them what kind of shitstorm they were stirring up, if they'd bothered to ask him.Quote from: wilfred on January 22, 2017, 11:08:24 pmIt's interesting how things come full circle.John Walkerkept a detailed journal while he was building up the Autodesk organization in the 1980s. He published it in book form ("The Autodesk File"), and subsequentlyreleased it as a .PDF(800+ pages, 6 MB). Walker's journal is a good historical source for anyone interested in AutoCAD or, really, the PC software industry in general. It's written in an anecdotal style reminiscent of Michael Abrash's, for those who may have cut their graphics-programming teeth on his books and magazine columns. Highly approachable and often entertaining.Except, that is, when it comes to justifying, defending, and eventually eulogizing the hardware dongle that AutoCAD used for copy protection. That's when the rhetorical gloves come off. Less Michael Abrash, moreMein Kampf.Walker loved his dongle like a good man loves his dog. But alas, the users to whom he owed his fortune felt otherwise, so it had to go. It must have been a sad day when he felt compelled to scribe pages 359-361 for posterity, recounting his reluctant decision to remove the hardware lock. His breezy tone grows bitter, accusing customers and competitors alike of conspiring against not only Autodesk but the entire future of the American software industry. He concludes:QuoteHistory doesn't just rhyme, it almost seems to actively repeat itself.There's a lot more good stuff in Walker's journal about the history and rationalization behind the dongle, if you search the entire .pdf forhardware lock. I originally bought his book in trade-paperback form, and while I can't seem to put my hands on that older edition now, I could've sworn that it included additional entertaining tirades against opponents of the dongle, comparing them to Ayn Rand villains or other fictional miscreants.I don't mean to make John Walker sound like some kind of hyper-entitled fruitcake, because he's not. He deserves a lot of credit for documenting, with sometimes-painful honesty, both the good and bad moves that he made in his career. Walker and his company reallywereintegral parts of the personal computing revolution.... the one that's now in the process of being disassembled byte by byte, idea by idea, and moved into various walled gardens in the cloud. Autodesk accomplished some wonderful, groundbreaking work, and they deserve almost all of the success they've achieved.But back then, just as now, nothing made good people come unhinged like an argument over copy protection.

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2017, 01:10:45 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on January 23, 2017, 01:04:33 amIn addition to pages 359-361, I'd recommend searching the whole document forhardware lock. The straw men that they pile up and set on fire are brighter than the Beacons of Gondor.QuoteSure. But what about deliberately making the same mistakes over and over again, expecting a different result?Remember that the last lesson in user-hostile licensing that they had to walk back was a LOT more recent than anything from the 1980s-1990s era.Edit: and frankly, for the record, I never had a problem with hardware locks. I wasn't a pirate, and in any event, I never ran into a hardware lock I couldn't disarm after spending an hour or two poking around in SoftICE. The whole controversy was a giant spittle-flecked flamefest about nothing... unlike the present situation, which is a much bigger problem for users.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2017, 02:08:07 am
content: People undergo remarkable transitions when their pocketbook is threatened. Very early in the desktop computer revolution (when most of us were literally designing and building our own), a co-worker did much of his engineering work on a very nice computer for the time, with a software suite that he proudly proclaimed came via the "Jolly Roger Software Club". A couple of years later he had written a couple of his own packages and was absolute death on piracy, sueing people believed to be using his software illegally, and pursuing these cases all the way to the top of our court system.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2017, 09:45:44 am
content: One of the main reasons the hardware lock was removed from AutoCAD 2.5 was because, contrary to their expectations, they *didn't* see a noticeable increase in revenue, despite the hardware lock.I think the same can be said today; people who are going to pirate won't be deterred by the required AutoDesk account or it phoning home (in fact this has already been patched by some creative hackers). However, I *do* think people who would legitimately pay for the software are more likely to be put off by the added expense of a subscription, not to mention the potential of not being able to use software they paid good money for in a few years time.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2017, 02:31:12 pm
content: Just came across this in AutoFile:Proof AutoDesk has been in the EDA business for at least 30 years...