Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="msd" data-source="post: 1592700" data-attributes="member: 19974">While I can see why a company would take this position (in the abstract), I have to (playing devil's advocate) ask the question of whether or not they are really serving their own best interests?  As you say, the product is beautiful and given the price point, I would think every small publisher out there would leap at the software for their cartography needs. But... Fluid's current policy simply cuts that potential revenue source right out of the equation.  So, really, what interest are they protecting and how well are they protecting that interest? The knee-jerk reaction is to say that they are protecting their IP but (as a law student studying IP) this just begs the question: what is the value of the IP to a corporation if it is divorced from a revenue stream...what possible business objective is met by spending what must, as you note, have been a colossal number of man hours in R&D only to implement a policy that makes the result of that work unusable to a significant percentage of potential consumers? Again, my sincere hope is that they re-consider their approach to this.  And, while I agree that you probably could reach an agreement with them regarding a commercial sale, do consumers, or Fluid (or most importantly Fluid's legal department) really want to be involved in a series of one-off negotiations when it seems patently clear that plenty of software companies have handled similar dilemnas successfully without comprising their own need to protect the integrity of their IP or the viable use of the consumer? Again, I think you've made a compelling case, and this is presented simply to demonstrate the other side of the equation.  All we can do is hope! -matt</blockquote>

Verification