BendrixBailey

Good article post. Thanks! The true leader in test and measurement, HP, has always had an open policy toward intellectual property. This is a telling quote: In a statement, Dr John E. Kelly, IBM senior vice president, Technology and Intellectual Property, said: "True innovation leadership is about more than just the numbers of patents granted. It's about innovating to benefit customers, partners and society. Using patents and the expense of litigation to crush small competitors and stifle innovations is not a benefit to society.

Interesting comments, especially the open source discussion. We have been debating the value of publishing the source to all of SoftWIRE and inviting people to improve and extend it, while of course we would remain the repository and distribution point for the SoftWIRE program so that we could ensure its quality. Anyone have something to add to that conversation? By the way, if you want to join a SoftWIRE forum just like the LAVA forum, we went live on Monday at: http://forums.softwire.com/ So, if people are interested in Graphical Programming and would like to see open source open distribution revenue free, why not join in and help us understand how to make that work for you. Thanks, and best regards, Ben Bailey

Too late for that. http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040907/75859_1.html Now we will see if NI does block further sales of Simulink...

BRAVO! That is a good idea. Why don

It is nice to see that the community is still interested in this topic. Here is a quick reply to the points made by rk4th and JohnRH. RK, you must know something special about Simulink and the NI patents to be able to dismiss them so quickly. If you have the

While it is correct that Simulink can still be purchased, and that The Mathworks is promoting it, it is also true that NI has asked for and been granted an injunction against future sales of Simulink. That injunction was stayed pending an appeal. The oral arguments of the appeal were heard on July 6th, 2004, and a decision is likely sometime in the October timeframe. If the verdict from the trial is upheld then the injunction will be as well. What will those who depend on Simulink do then? This is the question that may face LabVIEW users eventually if SoftWIRE prevails at trial and is granted an injunction against sales of LabVIEW. None if this is pleasant folks. It is all simply the inevitable outcome of Dr. B's bullying tactics. If NI had adopted a generous approach to patents as Agilent (Hewlett Packard) always has, there would be no problems on the horizon. Even if they demanded royalty payments as most patent holders do, it would not deprive the community of useful software. It is time for Dr. B to move his company to the next level. By the way, anyone interested in SoftWIRE will be able to download a fully unlocked copy from our web site next week. We have decided to make SoftWIRE a completely FREE product to promote adoption of a graphical programming standard in the Visual Studio environment. This announcement coincides with the release by three significant hardware vendors of support for SoftWIRE, with more on the way. I hate to say it LabVIEW users but all closed communities fail. Closed communities in computation fail faster! SoftWIRE is open and available, so if we can't open the LabVIEW model, then it is time we all joined in to replace it with an open model. Give SoftWIRE a look! It is FREE.

Regarding Visual Designer, yes, it was discontinued as a part of a settlement between NI and Burr Brown, who were the parent company of Intelligent Instrumentation, the creator or Visula Designer. Visual Designer was a very good product. Faster than LabView and easier to use. In fact, in a couple of trade show shoot-outs, Visual Designer beat LabView. This was clearly the contender for chief LabView rival at the time. Although the terms of the settlement are not public, it is somewhat curious to speculater about Burr Browns motivation for settling the law suit. The executives at Intelligent Instrumentation were ready and able to fight NI in court so were very disappointed with the parent when the settlement was forced on them. One can only speculate about the reasons Burr Brown chose to settle. NI may have been a large customer for Burr Brown components? Anyone who doubts that NI will wipe a product off the face of the earth need only examine the case of Visual Designer. What about the users who invested in Visual Designer to build measurement solutions? Who is next? The many thousands who rely on Simulink?

Hi Garvacious, your assesment of the profit picture may not be far off. An ex-NI employee once told me that he recalled top management at NI saying that the "software is the sizzle but the hardware is the steak". I have never seen a product line P&L for NI but my outside analysis suggests that they have made most of their money in GPIB and other hardware, and spent most of their money developing and selling software. They do post gross profit margins well above those typical for hardware alone (even at their prices) so the software is making a contribution to that. However, only an informed NI executive could tell you about the profit by product line so those other folks should not be too hard on you for your earlier comment. You might be close to right!

Hello again to the LAVA Forum, Sorry to have been so long out of touch, but it was interesting to get back on line and read the number and variety of ideas that have been added to the forum since my last posting on February 10th. I appreciate the dialog and the sincerity of your questions. I will do my best to answer them all in no particular order. Most interesting to me was to see several of you come down on one side or the other regarding my comments of encouragement to John Howard that invoked images of the conversations that led to the founding of the United States. I especially enjoyed the quote by Samuel Johnson. Frankly, I am much more interested in ideas and principles than in legal battles, so for my own pleasure I am going to add some thought to that debate. There was no attempt to equate MCC with patriotism in that statement. Both MCC and NI are good companies and global in reach. Neither has a claim to patriotism that exceeds the other. MCC does try to do its patriotic best when the time comes. For instance, we pay 100% of the salary of reservists called to duty (as do many USA companies). This is voluntary and provides no financial benefit to the company. We also donated $80,000 to local, regional airports for the purchase of two baggage scanners after 9/11. So we like to think we care about our country. I am sure the good people at NI feel the same. The point I was making in my encouragement to John Howard had nothing to do with patriotism. It had to do with the principle of open dialog. John appeared to be somewhat discouraged and I pointed out what sort of great events begin as smple open dialog. Open dialog has freed ideas and humans from uncountable shackles. Open and free speech should be a part of every society, and that is a principle I strongly believe. There are always risks associated with open dialog. Risks to the powerful and risks to the speaker, however great they may be though, an open dialog is the only road to understanding and resolution. That leads me to the next subject; Mr. Zogas retreat to the security of silence in the face of pending litigation. Several of you commented that silence is suspect, and well it should be. Pending litigation does not require silence. Making statements while litigation is pending simply requires that the speaker speak honestly and with basis in fact. Litigation is about discovering the truth and reaching a just verdict (no cynicism here please). Honest statements based in fact are all that are allowed in court lest perjury be committed. Anything honest and based in fact that will come out at trail can be said at anytime prior to, or during trail, without risk to the speaker. In fact, in civil litigation, secret evidence is expressly forbidden as each side must disclose to the other party all that it knows some time prior to the start of trial. The process is called Discovery. Mr. Zogas or others at NI could certainly speak out without risk, as do I. When they choose not to you should be aware it is simply that; a choice. Lawyers always want to run the show, and they do tell client to say nothing as it may be used against you. Well the lawyers have their day then move on to other clients. They don

Congratulations John Howard. The debate you initiated has spilled over into the financail community and onto a stock discussion site: http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&actio...687160&mid=1237 One of the postings (besides mine) mention LAVA as the place to learn about this debate. Just last evening John wrote me wondering if the public debate and his efforts to reach NI management were worth it; would it yeild results? Please join me in encouraging John to continue. Open public debate is the foundation of liberty. Ideas are the motive power behind action and without open debate ideas are suffocated. Who knows what may come of any debate, perhaps nothing, perhaps much. I suspect the debate that led to the revolution that resulted in the founding of this most powerful country on earth began in some small corner. Many have sacrificed much for our right to engage in public debate, let's never squander their sacrifice.

Hello to the LAVA forum. Having found this thread and being interested in the dialog, I joined LAVA so that I could contribute. I was pleased to find John Howard