UCITA good for GPL? (Score 1)

I must confess that I have only marginally followed the UCITA posts, but it seems to me that the UCITA could be good for the GPL and opensource in general, especially among small businesses.

What small company would want to hold itself hostage to a proprietary software vendor by opening itself up to the kind of external control that the UCITA provides? To say nothing of licensing fees, give those small businesses access to open and free solutions, and software companies that exert UCITA powers could be in real trouble.

I work for a small non-profit hospital doing clinical decision support, and with our database vendors we are already sensitive to a growing trend from licensing of software to licensing of access: vendors ask us to warehouse our data, and we purchase access to it. Under this model, if we alter our relationship with a vendor, we not only lose access to our data, but to all work (reports, analyses, results) done on that data that we don't have in hard copy.

The result of this shift in licensing has been to pull many of our database solutions in house, and it is only a matter of time before we start working with other non-profit hospitals to develop common and open solutions.

The UCITA essentially gives all software vendors the same "off switch" power that our warehouses have. I think under that model, those without the clout to negotiate UCITA exemptions will seek alternatives, just as we have.

-CSErwin