Goodness. I came back to 41 more messages on the topic. Dennis Collins said, "You aren't victimized by the authentication process in itself." But indeed you are. It encourages a "where are your papers" mentality. You must always be ready to explain yourself to a private entity. It extends corporate power into one's personal and business life. It encourages support of the company beyond the purchase of the product itself in order to keep the authentications available. It fosters false security, false loyalty, and an atmosphere of fear.
How many drops does it take to fill that bucket? How many infringements on your ability to be and work independently do you accept until your are bound in every way to a corporatized world view, where everything (and everybody) is ultimately for sale? So my concerns are both quotidien and philosophical. I agree with Robert Patterson about the nature of the abuse, as well as the difficulty of fighting it. I believe such a fight is important, considering that he points out that the company's management has already changed more than once. Ultimately, it can't be trusted to take our interests seriously. Simon Troup and I share a history of having written and marketed software. I ran a computer business for seven years. In that way, I am sympathetic to Coda/MM. On the other hand, the company (and similar companies) have only done half the job -- they've protected only themselves and their investments. Whatever indirect help that may be to customers should not be borne by those same customers. It is the company's responsibility, and such a burden shift is not only philosophically repugnant, it is ultimately harmful ... as, at this point, everyone has agreed because The Demise will come sooner or later. David Fenton said that I was "talking about the fact that everyone who upgrades their data to the authenticated version is flying without a parachute. As long as the airplane stays in the air with the engines running and doesn't catch fire, everything is great." That is an absolutely correct interpretation of my practical objection ... the individual, non-societal impact of Coda/MM behavior. David explains well that implementing an escrow program is a reasonable parachute, especially, as he notes, that Finale/Sibelius could well end up following the Beta/VHS path to oblivion for one of them, with Sibelius's successful marketing making it the winner. Simon Troup asks, "My expectation is that there are enough punters in the market place for the two current big players, I'm wondering if Dennis thinks we're all on some kind of precipice." Indeed, I think we are, in two ways. Here is the first: Although the feelings differ here because we are an international group, I am very sensitive to issues of privacy and personal liberty. We are not on a slippery slope, but indeed on a precipice where the U.S. is turning drivers licenses into de facto national identity cards, where people cannot travel domestically without a government-issued ID but are forbidden by law to see the regulations that require it, where corporations are given free rein to include regulation of personal behavior outside the workplace, and where -- as we find ourselves fully inside an information society -- information is increasingly classified as ownership-based intellectual property and the commons is shrunk to meaninglessness. And here is the second: We observe, not only with Coda/MM, but with other software makers (and related cultural institutions) a move 'toward the center' -- meaning the re-positioning of products to attract larger audiences, as opposed to improving their products within the existing audiences. We have seen incremental improvements in Finale's core purpose, but the addition of bells and whistles (such as human playback) that increase its ability without fixing its flaws in design/interface and product output. To me, that's a red-flag signal that they are moving toward making Finale a legacy product -- with the failure of Coda/MM if its market shift fails. (Note how this dovetails with David Fenton's marketing argument and his Beta/VHS analogy.) David Bailey asks, "Does anybody know for a fact that they have not set up such an escrow?" and David Fenton asks, "I'm wondering, though, if Dennis has any examples of software companies that have established a key escrow program. How do they publicize that fact, and how has it been structured?" I certainly don't know. The only third-party escrow programs that I'm aware of are source code escrow for corporate-corporate software contracts, and the government's interest in encryption key escrow. The latter is not relevant, and the former shows that, although an escrow process is possible, source code escrow is unhelpful for individual customers of a product like Finale. (I agree with David Fenton's answer to Noel about depositing the escrow with a major institution.) (Thanks to Darcy for the Dr. Strangelove quote.) David Bailey notes, "Most corporations don't publicly discuss their own demise nor what steps they may have taken to support their customers in the event of their going belly up," and then asks, "Can anybody produce corporate statements (especially from publicly traded companies) where the corporation tries to reassure the customer what will happen when/if the corporation goes out of business?" I can't do that, but I can point to the very existence of source code escrow companies as evidence that this planning is part of contracts among 'equals' -- which Finale customers are not. Simon Troup then asks, "escrow seems fine if the company transfers ownership without stopping trading or working. What if it were 6 months cessation of business? Under these circumstances keys would not be distributed as escrow would not take effect if receivers/insolvency practitioners were actively pursuing a sale as releasing the keys would seriously devalue the companies intellectual property." Although I think this is just looking for exceptions, there is still a solution -- a date-delimited patch. This is done with typical unrestricted software demos and beta versions all the time. When the patch times out, the previous system reverts. (If you're worried about hacks, they already exist. Life isn't entirely safe.) David Bailey's wonders "if subsequent purchasers of the company would continue to be bound by any untether escrow that MakeMusic might establish now." That is part of corporate credibility. You want the Finale asset to become instantly valueless? Have the corporate purchaser invalidate the license terms. He also offers, "I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the corporate clients, such as Warner Brothers and Hal Leonard don't have to go through the authentication process at all." A good question. Such a corporate version would indicate the existence of a version already prepared to meet the terms of untethering. Daniel Wolf asks, "How would market analysts react, for example, if they were to learn that the top of the line product of a small commerical software firm was being boycotted by the top users pending changes (one of which suggests a fundamental flaw in the product)?" And so we return to the possibility of confronting Coda/MM (and Sibelius, for that matter) publicly. A worthwhile challenge. Linda Worsley makes my day. "Geeze the way things are going in the world I may have to gather wood to burn for cooking and heating, buy a horse to take me around, plant my own garden and keep a root cellar, etc." To which I can only answer, Uh-oh. I cook with wood, have three horses, plant my own garden, and keep a root cellar. On a more serious note, this anecdote: I purchased Finale ten year ago after returning from living in Europe, the first month of which was in Cologne. But I didn't get to see Cologne because I spent the whole month at Clarence Barlow's kitchen table inking parts to a long orchestral score. My wife said, "That's it! This is [EMAIL PROTECTED]& ridiculous! First thing we do when we get back is put all this ^#$*#^* on computer!" Dennis PS to Robert Patterson: Did you get my email and attached image about the settings scrapbook problem I'm having? _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
