Alec Saunders SquawkBox

For some time now, press releases about VoipReview.ORG have been finding their way into my inbox.  I finally checked them out this morning. If you’re in the market for VoIP services, or think you might be, this is your one stop shop.  The three things I liked:

1. It has a comprehensive set of FAQ’s about VoIP for newbies. 
2. It has a massive database comparing every VoIP provider’s plans.  Besides Vonage, Packet8 and the usual suspects, there are hundreds of companies which I’ve never heard of.  There’s a quick summary of each offer, user reviews, and any special incentives that might be available.
3. It has a great speed test tool so you can figure out just how VoIP capable your network is.  Mine sucks.  That explains why call quality is so variable for me. 

Cool!

Apparently the LA Sherrif’s department has run afoul of Wall Data’s shrink-wrap license for Rumba.  The dispute hinges on the distinction between copyright and licensing, and the fact that the LASD had imaged the Wall Data software onto every drive.  Granted, the LASD had a strict system for policing usage, and only the licensed number of CPUs could use the software.  However, after NetManage acquired Wall Data, they required that the LASD pay for every image, rather than every CPU where the image was being used.

The LASD tried to argue they had rights under copyright law.  NetManage successfully argued that the license agreement was what mattered. 

Everything I’ve learned in the software business tells me that NetManage was correct.  The rights you have in a software license are the rights that you have been granted by the owner.  If the contract doesn’t give you specific rights that you feel are necessary, then you should negotiate for those rights with the owner. The LASD didn’t have a license granting those rights. Wall Data employees had allegedly assured the LASD that they could bend the license in the way that they were, however.   When confronted with their license violation, the LASD chose to remove the offending copies, and bring themselves into compliance. 

Why NetManage chose to pursue this issue in court baffles me.  They would have been smarter, in my opinion, to have negotiated a settlement. Less costly, speedier resolution, less ill-will created.

The larger lesson is that you need to read the license.  There is a difference between a concurrent license, a per user license, and a per CPU license.

Ed Foster has the full details in these three posts: 1, 2, 3.

More interesting, even, than the licensing details is the next step in the evolution of licensing.  In his 1999 classic Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, author Lawrence Lessig predicted that copyright and licensing would be replaced by the rules in code itself.  In other words,  it will become less and less important what the license says.  Evidence today that supports Lessig’s contention includes:

• installers that understand, on the basis of license keys, which components need to be installed, and which not. 
• software activation systems which check in with a central server once software is installed.
• systems like Microsoft Genuine Advantage which require a check-in before additional updates can be installed. 

In my ongoing quest for the perfect RSS reader, I’ve recently been introduced to Snarfer 0.5.  This is a client side RSS reader with an interesting twist.  The Snarfware gang have added what are essentially search wizards for EBay, Craigslist and the blogosphere.  So, for instance, if you’re looking for specific item in a specific price range, Snarfer will create a search request, grab the RSS feed from EBay, and store the results in a folder.  It’s persistent, and it’s intelligent.  And, it makes buying and selling goods via EBay or Craigslist that much easier.  Moreover, the Craigslist wizard actually lets you create searches which are multi-city searches.  That’s something you can’t do using Craigslist directly.

Perhaps even more useful to me is the blog search mechanism.  Specify a search term, and Snarfer will create a feed aggregating Blogdigger, Bloglines, Blogpulse, Feedster, Google Blog Search, Icerocket, MSN Search, Sphere and Yahoo! Search.  It would be cool if they added Technorati and Digg as well. 

Snarfer is free, although advertising funded.  Their model makes the process of reading each post a little time consuming, because it means clicking past the ad.  Hopefully as usage builds they will switch to a less intrusive model.  And, for now, it’s only client side.  In the future, I understand that it may be server based as well, allowing the holy grail of synchronized RSS reader feed lists.  For now, it’s a great tool for a standalone PC.

Snarfer is a refreshing and new cut on creating and using RSS.  Go try it out!  It’s the first new thing in RSS that I’ve seen in a long time!