[LINK] Software Escrow Deposits

[steve jenkin]

Alastair Rankine wrote on 4/1/08 3:46 PM:
>
> Over the years I've come to see the value in creating a
> project-specific canonical build machine on which the release builds
> of the software are to be made. This is left untouched during
> day-to-day development and access to it is controlled closely. In more
> recent years I've experimented with making this a virtual machine, to
> reduce the dependence on physical hardware such that it can be backed
> up or archived off. I think this is pretty future-proof; in 20 years
> time you just have to boot the VM image and you get everything needed
> to build the software, which also makes it a good deliverable for
> software escrow deposits.
>
> But let's not forget the documentation either, this story should sound
> suspiciously familiar to anyone who has worked in the software
> business at one time or another:

You talk as if you know what you're saying, but you have your head up
your arse.

Your VM's aren't going to run in 5 years, let alone 20.

Got Vista? bang, bang you're dead with licensing.

Worse to come when TPM is enforced - can't fake it with your VM.

That's not going to be the just the O/S either.
For all licensed Apps - TPM gives real bite to DRM.
DRM + TPM means enforced limited number of platform installs/moves for
licensed software. bang, bang, game over.

One of the known O/S & vendor responses to their detection of DRM
'violations' is deleting files they deem to be violations.
With encrypted filesystems using hardware features becoming more popular
in MS-land, the special backups needed probably won't let you get your
data back either.

Y2K proved that all production software, not just 'mission critical',
has a very long life. 20 years is a minimum.

Perhaps you are the person who some years back smugly publicly berated
me as a fool for using a command-line email program to vet everything
before it hit my home system.  I was advised that all I needed was a
virus scanner and personal firewall and I would be *perfectly* safe.   
Ha Ha Ha Ha. My systems are all still safe.

Your current suggestion is just as plausible and just as wrong headed.
Those who believe this inane proposal are living in a fools' paradise.

Is IA32 the definitive instruction set? Not for all time, not for all
purposes.

Currently, it loses for low-power and highly portable devices. ARM and
variants are king of that market segment.
As the speed/capability of those processors improves, there will be
pressure on low-end desktops, especially single-unit devices (iMac, Dell
XPS One), to adopt the chip. The Everex gPC at US$200 set a new
benchmark in *cheap*.  Things like the ASUS Eee are taking the industry
into new pricepoint territory.  The only way to hit these new prices is
to pick up existing cheap chipsets.  Good O/S's are born portable: viz.
Max OS/X, Solaris, Linux, *BSD, ...

Mobile phones outsell PC's and laptops by 5-10:1. Their technologies are
the ones to watch out for.
Intel chips are just too expensive and power-hungry in that world. If
MSFT doesn't adapt, it pretty much loses the whole game as Moores' Law
relentlessly pushes these 'cheap and cheerful' CPU's further up the
food-chain.

So what happens when the CPU architecture of the desktop, server and
build system changes - either in a single step or by a steady stream of
small and subtle changes?

Oops, you're lovely strategy turns to mush.
You are back to needing a hopelessly old, unsupported pile of crap.

"Chuck it all into a VM and you'll be fine" is B/S.

None of these risks are fanciful nor already occurred multiple times.

But none of this will matter to you - it'll be SEP with you long gone.
It's not what you know that's true that's gonna get you, it's what you
know is so, but ain't.
Which for you would seem to be a particular problem.

</sarcasm> Right back at you :-)

-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin