On May 06, John Enger wrote:
At 16:33 05.05.2003 -0700, Hunter Wylie wrote:
John, I can appreciate your frustration "but" when a software company lets control go on their strategic intellectual property they effectively dilute if not destroy the value of the corporation. Shareholders would have a real problem with NetApp putting their software in basically the public domain.
We are not talking Public Domain! I have bought a hardware unit, most other companies have a database of their units sold, and with what software. The thing is that NetApp does not. I'm critisising the lisencing system NetApp uses. It makes it totally impossible to learn proper NetApp without paying an arm and a leg for courses.
I agree with John: I don't see a piracy issue here. We've got 50,000 systems out there already, and I don't see why home users would be more likely to try to steal something than the people who already have access to those 50,000 systems. Plus we've got the Data ONTAP simulator which we are letting lots of folks have.
This isn't a case of us having carefully thought through the issue and made a decision to handle home users this way. It's just that there has never been much demand for our systems from home users, and we've never really thought about it at all.
I love the idea of people buying old equipment for home so that they can play with things without worrying about taking down production environments. (Same reason I love the ONTAP simulator.)
I've asked the product marketing folks to take a look at this. I don't know how our license database works, but it seems to me that even if we don't know all the add-on licenses that have been purchased, we could at least figure out how to let a home user have access to a base ONTAP release approrpiate for the system. I'm sure there are legal and operational issues, so no promises, but if other companies have figured this out, it seems like we ought to be able to.
Dave Hitz EVP Engineering and Co-Founder Network Appliance