Board index » delphi » Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?


2007-04-11 09:19:03 PM
delphi14
TJC Support writes:
Quote
So, why should your employer believe that his company will be more durable
than Codegear?
If they don't believe in their company, they won't be in business very long.
Quote
Why get bent out of shape worrying about the use of software
that will not be needed at all in the event of your company's demise?
<sarcasm>Exactly! why live life when we're all going to die? </sarcasm>
Quote
Come
to think of it, do you have another job lined up just in case your company
goes under?
I don't have anything "lined up", but it is foolish not to have some form
of contingency plan. If anything your point about recognizing that
nothing is guaranteed lends one to the natural conclusion that having
some kind of plan b, would be wise.
Quote
Yes, it would be nice to have all of these things guaranteed,
but life, and business, just don't work that way.
Agreed.
Quote
When Turbopower closed its doors, even though they didn't have their
products in escrow, they took care of their customers by making <most of>
them available as open source. There's no reason to believe that Codegear
wouldn't take care of their customers by providing a means of handling the
activation problem in the event that they closed.
Well, if you consider that "taking care" of their customers, I disagree.
Although a nice gesture and highly appreciated, it is a far cry from
having a vibrant company dedicated to producing products for the Delphi
community.
--
Brian Moelk
Brain Endeavor LLC
XXXX@XXXXX.COM
 
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Quote
When Turbopower closed its doors, even though they didn't have their
products in escrow, they took care of their customers by making <most of>
them available as open source. There's no reason to believe that Codegear
wouldn't take care of their customers by providing a means of handling the
activation problem in the event that they closed.
Good point.
It would be more reassuring if a senior manager assured us of that.
(No, not the product manager. He seems to be rather limited in the scope
of his powers )
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Using Parallels here - running Win XP Pro sp2 on a MacBook Pro. Fantastic
product. :-)
Best of all, the virtual hard drive image can be used by both the Windows
and the Mac versions of Parallels - no conversion required. So my virtual
pc on the Mac can be used inside Parallels on Windows if my Mac ever needs
to go in for repairs. :-)
--
Rob
In article <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>, XXXX@XXXXX.COM
(David Ninnes) writes:
Quote
<caveat>I have no legal training this is just my opinion</caveat>

Rob, if that is your real name, in my opinion this is a very low risk.
If it is a concern make a VM and keep a copy off site. BTW any one else
using parallels - it seems excellent and cheap?

Public companies don't just disappear overnight and even if they do,
their assets don't (not wishing to put any hex on Borland), they're
just sold off, their shareholders cancel their overseas trips and the
circle of life continues.

Bigger risks are getting software out the door, hard disk crashes,
meteor strikes etc.

Now where's my copy of powerbuilder gone... time to do some fixes.

Dave



 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:42:04 +0100, TJC Support
<XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes:
Quote
There's no reason to believe that Codegear wouldn't take care of their
customers by providing a means of handling the
activation problem in the event that they closed.
Whether any /CodeGear customer/ believes that CodeGear would or would not
"take care of their customers" is almost beside the point.
A much larger problem lies with the perception of a manager or board
responsible for committing their company to a long-term development path,
or any external lawyer/accountant exercising "due diligence" on behalf of
a prospective purchaser of either the developed program or the development
company as a going concern.
An essential part of "due diligence" is to detail each and every problem
which /might/ arise.
And do you think that problems exposed during due diligence /increase/ the
likelihood of a sale or the value of that sale?
--
Paul Scott
Information Management Systems
Macclesfield, UK.
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

"David Ninnes" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes
Quote

Rob, if that is your real name, in my opinion this is a very low risk. If
it's a concern make a VM and keep a copy off site. BTW any one else using
parallels - it seems excellent and cheap?

Others have reported that VM'd copies of Delphi do not work when run on
another system. If so, that would not be a good long term solution.
Quote
Public companies don't just disappear overnight and even if they do, their
assets don't (not wishing to put any hex on Borland), they're just sold
off, their shareholders cancel their overseas trips and the circle of life
continues.

If they are sold off, they do not always persist in the same form. e.g. Palm
bought Beos just for part of its technology, not to preserve Beos, Clarion
bought Topspeed Modula-2 to use their compiler technology as the foundation
of their 4GL etc. etc.
Quote
Bigger risks are getting software out the door, hard disk crashes, meteor
strikes etc.

I'm less worried about all of those than I am about CodeGear's continued
existence. The first two I have control over - if I am struck by a meteor
then I won't be in a hurry to use Delphi. I am not expecting CodeGear to
disappear, but as my livelihood currently depends 99% on Delphi it would be
totally irresponsible of me if I had no contingency plan in the event of it
happening.
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Quote

Best of all, the virtual hard drive image can be used by both the Windows
and the Mac versions of Parallels - no conversion required. So my virtual
pc on the Mac can be used inside Parallels on Windows if my Mac ever needs
to go in for repairs. :-)

Isn't that cool, it seems more popular in Mac land, I wish you could do the
other way round too - Mac on windows.
I'm running a linux vm on my windows machine with Apache running and somehow
the windows browser talks to the apache server running on the vm - magic. My
trial runs out soon, so I think I will be purchasing it.
Dave
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Quote
Others have reported that VM'd copies of Delphi do not work when run on
another system. If so, that would not be a good long term solution.


If they are sold off, they do not always persist in the same form. e.g.
Palm bought Beos just for part of its technology, not to preserve Beos,
Clarion bought Topspeed Modula-2 to use their compiler technology as the
foundation of their 4GL etc. etc.

I'm less worried about all of those than I am about CodeGear's continued
existence. The first two I have control over - if I am struck by a meteor
then I won't be in a hurry to use Delphi. I am not expecting CodeGear to
disappear, but as my livelihood currently depends 99% on Delphi it would
be totally irresponsible of me if I had no contingency plan in the event
of it happening.
Good points.
But then if Delphi disappeared, the only choice would be to move to a new
development platform, I am not sure if escrow would help at all? That would
still require someone to provide a product that was Delphi, much the same as
if Visual C++ disappeared then all the code would be on borrowed time. Even
if you could get a hold of the escrowed code, it would require large
resources to actually build a copy of delphi I would imagine.
Backups are more of a concern though, if the VM strategy doesn't work(damn!)
then there is a need to provide a method of restoring our current
environments, this is a risk then. Codegear have promised a backup
procedure, so I guess we'll have to wait and see, it is starting to be a
while now though, and no news.
Dave
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

TJC Support writes:
Quote
"Steve Thackery" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes
news:461cc4a2$XXXX@XXXXX.COM...
>Escrow doesn't really help, to be honest. It assumes the escrow company
>is going to be more durable than Codegear. Why should it be? It
>certainly wouldn't convince my employer. They want software they can rely
>on at any time in the future, without relying on any third parties.

So, why should your employer believe that his company will be more durable
than Codegear? Why get bent out of shape worrying about the use of software
that will not be needed at all in the event of your company's demise? Come
to think of it, do you have another job lined up just in case your company
goes under? Yes, it would be nice to have all of these things guaranteed,
but life, and business, just don't work that way.

When Turbopower closed its doors, even though they didn't have their
products in escrow, they took care of their customers by making <most of>
them available as open source. There's no reason to believe that Codegear
wouldn't take care of their customers by providing a means of handling the
activation problem in the event that they closed.

Van Swofford
Tybee Jet Corp.


What TurboPower did was great, but the reason why it wasn't an issue for
most of their products was that they had already included source code.
THAT is the protection that customers had. Releasing it to open source
was the icing on the cake.
That having been said, it is a shame that they weren't able to release
their tools as open-source as well (instead of just their components).
That's another reason I am still using BCB5, as their QA tools are dead
now as well...
David Erbas-White
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

David Ninnes writes:
Quote
Public companies don't just disappear overnight and even if they do, their
assets don't (not wishing to put any hex on Borland), they're just sold off,
their shareholders cancel their overseas trips and the circle of life
continues.
Really? You mean it takes at least a week or two?
There are a couple of 'relatively' good-sized companies I have worked for
that were 'bought out' and destroyed. Shortly after both takeovers, it
was virtually impossible to get any support for the pre-takeover
products. Now, several years later, they don't even have folks who've
HEARD of the products...
David Erbas-White
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Yah, it seems from what others have said that Delphi is locked to the
hardware on install, so we really have to rely on 14 year old hackers in the
worse case, not a pleasant feeling.
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Quote
(No, not the product manager. He seems to be rather limited in the scope
of his powers )
Oh, I don't know about that. He seems to have the mysterious power to
cloud men's minds.
(For those who don't get it, that is a reference to The Shadow, a 20th
century pulp fiction/radio drama/comics character.)
Rick Carter
XXXX@XXXXX.COM
Chair, Delphi/Paradox SIG, Cincinnati PC Users Group
--- posted by geoForum on delphi.newswhat.com
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

"Rick Carter" writes:
Quote
>(No, not the product manager. He seems to be rather limited in the scope
>of his powers )

Oh, I don't know about that. He seems to have the mysterious power to
cloud men's minds.

(For those who don't get it, that is a reference to The Shadow, a 20th
century pulp fiction/radio drama/comics character.)
Shadow was also the name of a racing car of the early 1970's which used
black as it is color motif. I hope Nick's mysterious powers are kinder and
gentler than Peter Revson's who drove for the Shadow team.
www.gpracing.net192.com/races/reports/238.cfm
"Missing from the grid was Peter Revson who was killed during pre-race
testing sessions in his Shadow DN3. Apparently a fatigued suspension part
broke sending Revson off the track. The heir to the Revlon fortune was
killed instantly and once more Formula One made headlines around the world
for all the wrong reasons."
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Quote
IMO, this is an ideal that will never be achieved. Delphi as it is
today relies on a healthy third party ecosystem; one must include
"Windows" as one of those third party dependencies.
The point is, corporate versions of Windows don't need activating, so my
employer can archive a copy and use it ten or twenty years in the future.
(The same is done with the development hardware, too - this is common
practice).
The same cannot be said for recent versions of Delphi.
That is why I am hoping Codegear will abandon on-line activation, especially
as it is widely acknowledged that it does NOTHING to deter piracy. Cracked
copies of Delphi 2007 are already available.
Incidentally, some development systems have to be isolated from the internet
for security reasons, which again knackers the activation.
A previous contributor says his employer keeps a cracked copy of each
version of Delphi in a safe, so they can be sure of getting a working
development system up and running even if Codegear have disappeared, or
whatever.
I wish Codegear would take a risk with this one.
Steve
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Quote
So, why should your employer believe that his company will be more durable
than Codegear? Why get bent out of shape worrying about the use of
software that will not be needed at all in the event of your company's
demise?
I think you've missed the point. If my company goes{*word*255}up it won't care
whether it can continue to maintain its products and business systems.
What it needs is a guarantee that if it stays in business, it CAN maintain
them.
When I say that my company is using - and still maintaining - software that
is 25 years old I am serious. It is a major telecomms operator, and it is
not unusual for business process software to stay in service for that length
of time. In fact, the software I am talking about is used in products still
providing good service to hundreds of our customers.
The Intel development system for the firmware, and the DEC VAX system for
the main software, are both "archived" and kept in good order.
Do you see what I am saying? My company is in control of what happens to
that development environment, and can keep it running for as long as they
want.
But they can not do that with Delphi, because they have NO control over a
registration/activation server operated by someone else.
Honestly, if Codegear would get rid of that on-line activation system it
would gain some customers who won't use Delphi at the moment for the reasons
I've given.
Steve
 

Re: Escrow: when is it happening ?

Quote
And if you can not convince your employer that an activation crack from some
hacker is an acceptable alternative then you've got a real problem with
using CodeGear's toolset. :)
Being a large corporate, and members of FAST, they won't acknowledge that
option officially. I have no idea whether an employee has stuck a cracked
copy away somewhere. But again, that won't convince the decision makers.
They want a fully legal method.
Steve