Whoops: ODA Can't Use "TrustedDWG" No More

(Sorry for the bad English in the title to this piece; I'm listening to Luthor Wright and the Wrong's country-and-western rendition of Pink Floyd's The Wall. For example, the infamous "Wanna have a bath?" line is reinterpreted to "Whew! You need a bath.")

Randall Newton's AECnews.com blog is headquarters for Autodesk's legal action against the Open Design Alliance (and, by proxy, against all its competitors). He has posted the complaint papers filed by Autodesk, and now reports that a judge rules the ODA can't use "TrustedDWG" for the time being.

Comments

[R. Paul Waddington]

Thanks Ralph, Randall, Deelip and others. Having now read the published court information relating to this topic I would like to make a suggestion to all readers of Ralph's, Randall's and the other blogs that have published documents and comments.
Regardless of whether or not you like or dislike Autodesk, and or ODA, we users will lose something if this action proceeds, and as this action is not really about improving or protecting Autodesk's or our data all should e-mail [email protected] and strongly suggest to Ms. Bartz that it would be in Autodesk's best interest to drop this suit. 'TrustedDWG' is nothing more than 'marketing mud gum', a smear tactic that has been thought up by Autodesk, a company that has lost sight of the fact it is a tool supplier, a tool supplier that hasn't even worked out how to share data seamlessly across its own MCAD programs. TrustedDWG, whatever that means, does nothing to improve Autodesk's users profitability (quite the reverse)and if you think about it every time those warnings show up what will be muttered (or screamed) from the user is "damn Autodesk". The user will not be criticising the contractor or customer for supplying these drawings. He/she will have done a good job using his preferred or needed tools and Autodesk's 'Not to be trusted' message is trying to suggest otherwise.
Autodesk needs to consider the inconvenience and negative message that will be reinforced each time a user encounters and needs to react to the Trusted or Not to be Trusted messages.

[anon]

Techdirt's take on this :

http://techdirt.com/articles/20061206/190337.shtml