issue
#307
3 September 2002
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a l k i n g a b o u t c a d
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issue
#307
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Contents
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Sting Stops Sale of SolidWorks Sourcecode A software engineer was last week arrested after trying to sell the source code for the current version of SolidWorks to undercover FBI agents in a New Delhi hotel room. SolidWorks had given Geometric Software Solutions the contract to debug SolidWorks 2001 Plus. A GSSL employee, Shekhar Verma, worked on the the debugging project, and then resigned from the company after making a copy of the code. The speculation is that he downloaded the code to his home computer from GSSL's FTP site, and then created the CDs. In July this year, he began began emailing American software companies using an alias, telling the companies he was willing to sell them the source code. One company he contacted, Solid Concepts, alerted SolidWorks and the FBI. [It would be interesting to know the reaction of other companies contacted.] The Boston office of the FBI conducted negotiations by email. Mr Verma agreed to a price of US$200,000, of which an initial 10% payment was wired to his bank account. A meeting was arranged to hand over the remaining amount in exchange for the discs. Last Sunday, August 25, two undercover FBI agents met with Mr Verma at the Ashoka Hotel in New Delhi. In the hotel room, Mr Verma allegedly handed over two CDs containing the entire source code. Agents from CBI [Central Bureau of Information of India] recorded the meeting, and then arrested him for theft and criminal breach of trust. CBI director P. C. Sharma said the source code was worth over US$70 million. FBI secial-agent-in-charge Charles Prouty said, "This case is a significant milestone in the investigation of intellectual property thefts." - - - Response to the Arrest Readers of the 'Times of India' article, "IITian Held for Stealing Software Source Code," were dismayed that the incident cast doubt on the integrity of the computer programming industry in India, suggesting that Mr Verma's IIT degree be taken from him. Wrote one, "It is a high time now to examine the reasons which force a brilliant IITian to become a thief. ...Worldcom, Enron, etc should not be our example." Readers were also annoyed that Mr Verma's school, IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] was emphasized in the headline; the place of schooling had nothing to do with the event. SolidWorks said,
"The theft of intellectual property is a serious, punishable
offense and will not go unrecognized by SolidWorks Corporation and
Geometric Software Solutions. SolidWorks and GSSL plan to pursue
this case to the furthest extent of the law. The FBI, GSSL, and
the Indian government authorities have been extremely fast, efficient,
and cooperative in responding to this situation." - - - Q&A upFront.eZine interviewed Laura Kozikowski of SolidWorks and Manu Parpia, managing director of Geometric Software Solutions: upFront.eZine: Is the story's claim true of the source code being worth US$70 million? SolidWorks: We estimate the value of SolidWorks' source code to be somewhere between the range of US$70 and US$90 million. GSSL: The sales from SolidWorks 2001 Plus have been estimated in excess of US$60 million for last year only. However, the source code is re-used year after year for the entire life of the software product. We have no idea of the value of the SolidWorks source code except to say it's very valuable.
upFront.eZine Are SolidWorks and GSSL doing anything to prevent this from re-occurring? SolidWorks: Yes; we did do something: we caught the criminal with the cooperation of others in the industry. And SolidWorks and GSSL are further tightening our already sound security procedures. GSSL: Geometric and SolidWorks are now working closely together to determine what further actions can be taken to improve security at Geometric's facility and elsewhere. Further information we may receive from the CBI as to how Mr. Verma was able to obtain the copy of the source code will assist us in determining how to improve security. Separately, Geometric has instituted a thorough analysis of its procedures governing making of copies, use of FTP sites, downloads, and the like.
upFront.eZine: Does GSSL have a comment on their future relationship to SolidWorks and Dassault Systemes? GSSL: Geometric and SolidWorks have shared a deep relationship since 1996. SolidWorks has been very supportive and understanding. We believe this incident will not affect our long-standing relationship. We are working closely to determine what further action needs be taken to improve security at Geometric's facility and elsewhere.
upFront.eZine: Indian ITs [information technologists] are worried this loss of trust may result in loss of work for them. Can you comment on the future of American-Indian software cooperation? GSSL: The Indian authorities are well aware
that this case is of significant importance because it highlights
two important aspects: - - - About GSSL Geometric Software Solutions has over 500 employees with offices in India, USA, Germany, Japan and Singapore, and head office in Pune India. In addition to SolidWorks, GSSL lists as OEM clients EDS PLM Solutions, MatrixOne, MSC.Software, Spatial, Autodesk, CADKEY, Delcam, Alibre, and others. The company provides a variety of turnkey services using a blend of offshore and onshore delivery in the areas of solid, surface and feature-based modeling; surface and feature-based solids machining, nesting, pocketing, reverse engineering; drafting, UI and 3D display; geometry kernels, ACIS, Parasolid, DesignBase; body healing, mending, quality checks; and so on. http://www.geometricsoftware.com - - - Sidenote The 'Times of India' article listed the amount of money as "$2,00,000", so I asked reader Amar Paul Singh for help in decoding that. He replied: The $2,00,000 = $200,000. In the Indian number system we have
place series that goes like this : - - - Links: FBI press release: http://www.fbi.gov/fieldnews/august/bs082802.htm Times of India article: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=20389713 Q&A: Five Minutes with Mark Madura of Datacad In last week's upFront.eZine, I wrote about the split between softTECH and Datacad LLC based on information from last April. This week, I spoke with Mark Madura about DATACAD's relationship with softTECH and its new o2c_Interactive! software. Mr Madura has been the president of DATACAD LLC since October 1996, when rights for the DataCAD product line were purchased from Micro Control Systems (formerly Cadkey, Inc).
Q: What's happened since the split with softTECH? A: Since last October, when the split occurred, we've been able to reach a settlement agreement whereby softTECH will be able to distribute SPIRIT 11 enhanced with features from DataCAD 9 and 10, and DATACAD will retain rights to distribute o2c and ArCon OEM technology.
Q: What's happening, then, with ZAC [Zone-based Architectural Construction]? A: As part of the settlement, DATACAD will retain a few specific technologies from SPIRIT such as o2c read/write and the ability to read SPIRIT/DataCAD Plus 9.5 files. As far as the ZAC system is concerned, we opted to develop our own object-oriented smart walls, instead of continuing with SPIRIT's wall system modeler.
Q: So, when is the next major upgrade to DataCAD 10 due (i.e. DataCAD 11)? A: Due in large part to the termination of DataCAD Plus 10 and the development of our own parametric technology, we're off our usual 15-18 month release cycle. While no release date has been set, we expect to deliver the next major upgrade to DataCAD 10 sometime in 2003.
Q: After your problems with softTECH, I was surprised to read you were working with their parent company's o2c technology. How come? A: To be more specific, we are sub-licensing
the o2c and ArCon OEM technology from softTECH. Like most software
developer relationships, however, it's a complicated story:
Q: You are pushing o2c [objects to see] at a time when there are many other compact 3D file formats for use over the Internet. There's Graphisoft's GDL, Actify's SpinFire, SolidWork's 3D PartStream, and so on. What reason do you have for pushing Yet-Another-File-Format? A: We know there are probably a dozen 3D file formats, and we looked at many of them. We stayed with o2c because of our relationship to the company that produced it; it makes extremely small files compared with the others; and the freely-distributable player has an easy-to-use interface that includes Raytraced rendering. We've also built o2c_Interactive! around the o2c ActiveX control.
Q: Looking at the demo at your Web site, I like the way scenes can be changed. A: We call those "schemes," and plan
to make objects or assemblies part of a scheme definition in addition
to material, texture, and lighting.
Q: How much is o2c_Interactive!? A: It's currently a free, 30-day BETA download from http://www.datacad.com/o2c_Interactive! . Once it ships, it'll be US$99.95.
CAD Data Standards Should Not be Free Editorial by Jay Roberts Although I've been out of the CAD industry for almost two years, I worked for a number of years at Bentley Systems, Jacobus Technology, and Intergraph Corporation. During this time, I did extensive development work for data standards, such as IFC, STEP, and POSC-Caesar. In my opinion, it is very unlikely that open standards such as these will be well implemented on a widespread basis. Why is this? First, the standards are difficult, if not impossible,
to implement for production purposes in many cases. For some reason,
these CAD standards get hijacked by theorists who have no regard
for implementation, and get bogged down in analysis paralysis or
extended forays into ontological philosophy [where something is
proven to exist from reason alone]. This holds for the specific
data protocol as well as the underlying language, both of which
exhibit the worst features of "design by committee," exacerbated
by frequent turnover in committee membership. Second, and more importantly, there is little economic
incentive for the CAD software companies to devote the relatively
large amount of resources to working out the many problems arising
from translation of complex information schema. Basically, customers
want data standardization to save money by encouraging price/feature
competition on open standard products. So why would any CAD company
spend real money on a data import/export feature that in production
use serves only to potentially reduce their revenue stream? This
limits implementations to demos to provide some satisfaction for
customer requests for translators. Jay Roberts is director of product support at an information processing software company.
below the radar A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I find interesting: TurboCADCAM will be launched at the International Machine and Tool Show in Chicago on September 4, 2002. LightWork Design has released a multi-threading version of LightWorks for Mac OS X. http://www.lightworkdesign.com ESI Group announced PAM-STAMP 2G, their integrated sheet metal stamping simulation software that handles everything from die design feasibility to process validation. http://www.esi-group.com
seminars and conferences Techday is the fourth annual Bentley customer meeting on Sept 9 in São Paulo, Brazil http://www.techday.com.br (in Portuguese). Worldwide Advances in Rapid and High-Performance Tooling on December 6 in Frankfurt, Germany. http://www.garpa.org
People/Companies on the Move PRO/E magazine hired Jim Leary <jim.leary@connectpress.com> as the new product manager. Mr Leary previously worked as general manager at several New Mexico and California radio stations.
Redo Some readers wondered about details of the Autodesk Inventor Series seat counts. Inventor seat counts include cross-grades from AutoCAD, MDT, and so on. Autodesk says that "those AutoCAD and MDT users are now Inventor users. Hence, they represent a purchase of a new Inventor seat." The seat count does not, however, include the free upgrades given to MDT subscription holders last spring. The ship date for Revit v5 was mis-spoken during the Autodesk conference call. The scheduled date is Q4 (nov-dec-jan).
Market News Bricsnet announced its 2Q revenues of e413,000, down from e853,000 the previous quarter. The company has significantly reorganzied. For example, during Q1, Bricsnet divested operations in France and Germany, and sold its CAD division and ARCAT for over e1 million cash. Nemetschek AG reported sales during its first half fiscal year of e55.1 million, down 16% from the previous year. The company says it continues to suffer the consequences of the economical and structural crisis in the construction industry, and reluctance to invest in the IT sector. Its board intensified a restructuring program with another cut of more than 100 jobs and cost reductions in all areas.
Letters to the Editor "I rec'd the first issue today. Lots of info, but it's also
more and more frustrating to see the 'sea' of software titles. Not
that my head has been in the sand, but I realize when looking at
my resume, that altho' I've had to learn a few styles of CAD for
design purposes, there is no way that I've ever heard of most of
what is listed in job descriptions today. - Tim Starkweather < hwkmn@infi.net >
Re: IFCs and BLIS "Here is
one IFC project that would be interesting for your readers: the
Singapore Government is using IFC to automate government rules for
approval. <http://www.epmtech.jotne.com/newsletter/ew101/singapore.html
>
Re: Is Our Children Learning? "'Is our
children learning?' was not a deliberate grammatical error by a
writer at 'Red Herring' but a quote from a campaign speech made
by George W. Bush in Florence, South Carolina, in January 2000.
Sad but true!" "I find the emphasis on computer use in the elementary schools
an incredible waste of time. Computer use is a very large use of
time; it is implemented in inefficient and disorganized ways;, and
is seen by many (especially by those who manage the systems) as
the tool that will solve all problems in the classroom.
"Thanks for interesting reading. I like to keep up with
the old industry." "Very nicely done objective information." "Thanks very much, and keep up the good work."
Notable Quotable "As a generator of instant wealth, the Net may now be a
big bust; as a generator of instant ideas, it keeps thrumming along."
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Return to www.upfrontezine.com. Entire contents copyright ©2002 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide. Article reprint fee $500. All trademarks belong to their respective holders. "upFront.eZine," "Talking About CAD," and "On your desktop every Tuesday morning" are trademarks of upFront.eZinePublishing, Ltd. Letters to the editor may be reproduced in an edited form for clarity and brevity. Opinions expressed in letters are not necessarily shared by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. |
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