Okay, what is the connection between a medical devices blog and Autodesk? Well not much, but to be fair, AutoCAD was the first modeling package I used as an engineering student. Suffice it to say there is no love lost here. And then, they do this to bring joy and happiness....
The premise of copyright is to protect your work, not to further your illegal plans to build huge corporate empires based on CAD package sales. It is almost shameful to honest engineering that companies would lose sight of fundamental ethics and go off on the left field to commit what could veritably be proved a crime in court.
Exactly where commonsense disappears and insanity begins seems to be a greying deadline. You know, I was always wondering, with the advent of Pro/Engineer and later, SolidWorks, what AutoCAD's marketing and sales strategies where...well now we know!
It is hard as it is, for engineering students, small firms and entrepreneurial individuals to afford software, but AutoCAD has done grave injustice to all these classes of people for years, as it now becomes apparent.
I wonder what this one person achieves by earning $10 million from AutoCAD, but one would hope that if the court sees this activity as purely illegal, it should set an example for other large companies trying to "cut corners".
And, as to the California Bar Association's investigation of the lawyer, one would hope this is quick and effective. My cliched suggestion to them is "put legal back into the practice of law".
Hopefully this case results in more of a lesson to companies donning the fraud coat than, say, what a very large, two letter-name bearing IT firm got for its "creative listening" activities...
My advice to young engineers?
- Based on my understanding of the "best practices" at Autodesk, gain skills in modeling packages that you may afford.
My advice to other modeling companies?
- Before you plan to mire your future customers with "network licensing" and other dubious "lock ins" .... watch out. The customer is not for yours to imprison, but win over.
How is it that I repeatedly see companies missing out on the "Duh" facts of life? Why do I find myself repeatedly asking these questions?
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