Autodesk’s API guru Kean Walmsley is the second Autodesk person I’ve seen who has been brave enough to stick his head above the parapet by discussing the Cloud, in writing, and in a medium that allows for public comment. Kean has always seemed like a straight shooter to me. Please note that his blog represents his personal opinions rather than an official Autodesk position. He’s after your comments, so please go and let him know what you think on his post. Add your comments here if you’re more comfortable with that, and I’ll make sure Kean sees them.
Autodesk’s Kean about moving to the Cloud
Author: Steve Johnson
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has anyone heard about how customization would be handled? Where would tools go, and what kinds of issues arise from a product running on a cloud server interacting with local files. Must tools be local? How do I easily maintain tools on a cloud server?
All kinds of questions that have not even been touched.
That’s a big problem with Autodesk’s interaction with the community about this stuff. Other than marketing statements, it’s extremely limited. People have a wide range of concerns, and when they are aired, the best responses we’ve been able to get so far have been along the lines of “Yes, that will be one of the challenges we will be addressing as we move forward to embrace this new and wonderful technology.” No real interaction, no real answers to legitimate and specific concerns. That’s not Kean’s job, but it should be someone’s.
We cannot use AutoDesk’s cloud, as long as the TOS (section 2.2 of http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=17784802) contains the following language:
“You hereby grant Autodesk (or warrant that the licensor of such rights has expressly granted) a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, paid-up, worldwide, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) license to store, display, reproduce, modify, use and transmit Your Content, and further waive “moral” rights or other rights with respect to attribution of authorship or integrity of Your Content that You may have under any applicable law and under any legal theory.”
I think the reasons are more than painfully obvious as to why.