Bricscad's future???
Just recently read about the "mighty" Autodesk's legalaction against the Open DWG Alliance and can't helpbut wonder how this will affect Bricscad and all the otherIntellicad versions. Maybe it's time to quit trying to retrofiteverything and pave a new direction. Not meaning anydisrespect, just voicing my opinion.
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Hi Tim,The real issue with Autodesk is about the fact that the ODA has reverse engineered a messaging system in ACAD 2007, that warns the ACAD user when he opens a non-ACAD file, saying ''This is not a Trusted-DWG file". The ACAD user can turn off such messaging. Autodesks point is that the ODA has not the right to reverse engineer this. For us - honestly, this is not a big deal: it is more about strategic marketing. It may happen that Autodesk wins this but so what? For as long as Autodesk doesn't attack on the ODA's DWG features itself - which would clearly be interpreted as trying to protect their monopoly - we expect sum buzz but nothing substantially. In the latter case it would be time to contre-attack. It is good to remember that all big CAD shots (SolidWorks, UDS, Bentley, PTC, ...) are also ODA Founding Member (as well as BricsCad)and they represent a huge part of the CAD users. Frankly I don't expect that this will be ignored ever. As a member of the Board of Directors of the ODA and of the ITC I defend the interests of our customers. I am confident that both the ODA and the ITC are there to stay.regardserik
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Maybe it wouldn't even hurt for Acad users to realise dwgs can actually be produced without Acad. The "warning" might wake them up. Having used Icad since 1998, I still often get incredulity from fellow professional cad people who don't even know there is any alternative.
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If Autodesk can legally defend its pop-up method, then they can just as easily block any non-AutoCAD dwg's from opening.I think this issue should eventually be adressed by our Legislative branch. I would love to see a law passed which require document formats to be open, and specified by the software maker. This way we won't even need the reverse engineering that the Open DWG Alliance has to do. Has anyone heard of such legislation being proposed?Joe Dunfee
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Autodesk aren't defending it - they are prosecuting others for bypassing it. Seems to me if they could block non-acad files from opening they would, but it's either not possible or else not considered in their best interest.I don't see that any court could demand a format should be open, this is a much different situation than the one in which the .dwg format was originally let out of the bag.
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I don't see that any court could demand a format >should be openI agree, but that is why I specified legislative action. They get to define what "fair use" of copyrighted material is. Having complete access to the data you created yourself,should in my mind, be spelled out as a "fair use". Locking up the data in a secret way is anticompetitive, and can even be used as a kind of extortion. Again, the right legistlation can settle all of this for us.Joe dunfee
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I can't see the difference between legislative action and its enforcement by a court? Many/most softwares (and OS's) do this - use data (and executable code) formats which can't be used by any other. Often the way data is written and handled is a clever feature of the software just as the way it runs and things it does are. To provide the ability to universally access the data would virtually mean access to their software code unless we expect them to invent another way to read & write the data and give that away... even if they could. I can't see that they should be obliged to do that, however convenient it might be for us.
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Now ODA has sued Autodesk as well...http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2006/12/oda_counterattc.html
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