The real question we need to raise is [LWN.net]

The real question we need to raise is

Posted Aug 10, 2006 6:18 UTC (Thu) by rakoenig (subscriber, #29855)
Parent article: A couple of lessons on the hazards of proprietary software

"why the hell is inellectual property more valueable than physical property?"

I guess that the owner of the cars which were locked in the robotic garage didn't care a damn about licensing issues of software but they cared a lot how to get home without their cars.

So practically someone (either the city of hoboken or the robotic garage company) held the trapped cars like hostages to enforce what they want. Isn't that a crime in the United States?

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The real question we need to raise is

Posted Aug 10, 2006 14:03 UTC (Thu) by emj (guest, #14307) [Link]

apperantly th ecity paid $23 000 a month before getting that reduction. Total to this date the city has paid more than one million dollars in support fees. One may wonder how much they paid to get that parking garage constructed.

$23,000 vs $5,500

Posted Aug 12, 2006 0:29 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

But it wasn't simply a "reduction." The city formerly paid $23,000 to have the garage fully operated, and now pays $5500 for the right to use the software and operate the garage itself.

Worth $5500?

Posted Aug 12, 2006 0:51 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Robotic Parking claimed it spent $10M to develop the software. If so, I could see it being worth $5500 a month.

Worth $5500?

Posted Aug 12, 2006 11:23 UTC (Sat) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link]

> Robotic Parking claimed it spent $10M to develop the
> software. If so, I could see it being worth $5500 a month.

Hang about! This is a classic monopoly argument. What they mean is that it cost them $10M and the customer has no choice but to pay off their monthly interest fees.

I could very easily spend $10M developing some software which would be worth absolutely nothing at all ... in fact I worked for a company during the dot-com boom which did about that :-) In a free market, whoever had been stupid enough to give me that money would have lost their shirt, and customers would have gone with a cheaper/better competitor.

Rich.

Worth $5500?

Posted Aug 12, 2006 16:52 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

But we have to assume that Robotic Parking tried to spend as little as possible developing the software. It was not working on a military-style "cost plus" contract and in fact apparently had no intention of selling the software, so every dollar Robotic spent was a dollar out of its pocket. Your dot-com employer probably also made an effort to spend less building whatever you built, and didn't know a way to do it cheaper.

So there's a good chance that it really costs $10M to develop software to run that garage (we don't have any better information), which means that the city couldn't develop new software for less, which means it could be worth $5500 a month to the city to avoid developing new software.

This is the free market worth argument, the one that would be used in Robotics' lawsuit for royalties. There are other ways of approaching worth. By one method, it's worth nothing because the entire $10M is a sunk cost.

The cost of robotic software

Posted Aug 14, 2006 18:17 UTC (Mon) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

You can't tell me that the software to run a robotic parking garage, which I imagine is technically fairly simple, is worth $5500 per month.

I suspect you haven't developed much embedded software, much less life-critical software.

The garage control isn't life-critical the same way, say, a medical ventilator is, but you really don't want to crush any customers while you're closing the gate. You really don't want to crush any cars, either. Stuff that controls moving equipment having enough force to hurt someone takes a lot more work (including redundancy and fail safe design) than something dealing with, say, your bank account.

Add in coordination with the hardware designers (and I mean hardware :-), and costs add up a lot faster than for a general-purpose computer program whose only output is pixels.

The real question we need to raise is

Posted Aug 11, 2006 10:28 UTC (Fri) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]

Don't know about the USA and I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt it's a crime. More likely it's a breach of contract and a civil court dispute.

The motorist has a contract with the parking facility, which explicitly or implicitly says he'll get his car back on demand. There's probably some degree of discaimer possible for mechanical or system failures, but again almost certainly a legal implication that such failure should be attended to with a degree of urgency.

So the motorist can sue in the civil courts for the loss of use of his car, if the court feels that some initial period of delay was reasonable then he may not get all of the costs he incurred.

As for the contract between the parking operator and the software company, I won't venture an opinion. It's possible that the operator might be able to sue the software house for the costs awarded to the motorists. It would again all depend on the contract, its implied terms, and on what is and is not reasonable in a contract.

BTW if the parking operator had gone bust, the motorists could be in for a long wait. First a liquidator would have to be appointed. Then he'd have to work out how to get the cars out. They'd remain the motorist's property, but reasonable delay about extracting them in these circumstances could be weeks. Motorists beware.

The real question we need to raise is

Posted Aug 12, 2006 0:50 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I don't see a crime here either. I do see some civil liability, but not in contracts.

There's no contract between the vehicle owner and Robotic Parking. There's a contract between the vehicle owner and the city (technically, a utility operated by the city, but we'll just call it the city). The city owns the garage and hired Robotic Parking to take money, park cars, etc. While it might seem obvious that the parties intended for the car to be delivered back at a certain time, the contract probably didn't actually include that. That kind of detail doesn't get implied; it has to be said. But the city still owes the vehicle owner money for the tort of conversion (the city effectively stole the vehicle). This is the cost to the city of the city's poor job of negotiating its contract with Robotic Parking.

Robotic Parking had a contract with the city to operate the garage, and Robotic Parking used its own software to do it; the city never had any right to use the software. This is a well known contracting hazard known as "single sourcing." You depend on something only one vendor can provide.