Rod Boothby is running a Read/Write Intranet Idol – it’s a poll I invite you to participate in, so I am attaching it at the bottom.  But first, it gives me a chance to share some of my (wiki)-thoughts.  The list is a mix of industry beh…

So you can imagine what happened: the developer checked in code with comments and valid license headers (which are also comments), and the build script removes those comments in the final stage. The build output itself, packaged as a binary, is deployed in the production system. That binary has inside it the Javascript code in question. It was a completely innocent mistake, but nevertheless, it is our fault. We apologize sincerley.

The framework with that offending build script is used in only some of our products, which is why the copyright notice was preserved in some products and not in others.

We are checking our entire code base to find any other instances of this. We should complete it this in a few days, and if we find other instances, we will immediately modify the script.

Anonymous commenter: please accept our gratitude for bringing it to our attention, and our apologies for letting this happen.

Sridhar

We are now doing a full review of all our code, to make sure we don’t have this anywhere else.

Thanks,

Sridhar Vembu

Zoli Erdos asked " ]]> http://www.zoliblog.com/2006/06/21/would-you-rather-be-first-to-market-or-better/#comment-624 Sridhar Vembu Thu, 22 Jun 2006 02:36:09 +0000 http://www.zoliblog.com/2006/06/21/would-you-rather-be-first-to-market-or-better/#comment-624 Anonymous: A quick investigation revealed that we have used Prototype.js in two places (we are checking other services now): http://zohoplanner.com/js/prototype.js and http://zohosheet.com/framework/javascript/prototype.js?M5_3 In the first instance, the copyright is fully preserved. In the second instance (which is an older version of the library), the copyright is missing. It was an inadvertant mistake. We apologize. We will fix it by tonight. We take these issues seriously, and will be hyper-vigilant to ensure it never happens again. Sridhar Vembu Anonymous:

http://zohoplanner.com/js/prototype.js

and

http://zohosheet.com/framework/javascript/prototype.js?M5_3

In the first instance, the copyright is fully preserved. In the second instance (which is an older version of the library), the copyright is missing. It was an inadvertant mistake. We apologize. We will fix it by tonight.

We take these issues seriously, and will be hyper-vigilant to ensure it never happens again.

Sridhar Vembu

(This is not a classic example in the sense that other players did not outsmart, innovate or just execute better, the market simply got commoditized but being first mover Vonage’s costs are extremely high)

I will personally investigate this issue and get back here. I don’t know the library in question, and I don’t know which Zoho service you are referring to, and if we have done it, yes, it is bad. I will get back to you end of the day today.

Our development team is under strict instruction to be very vigilant on intellectual property issues, particularly in the use of open source libraries (which we do use). If we have made a mistake here, we will apologize and fix it right away.

Thanks,

Sridhar Vembu

I can think of countless examples where it was NOT a good idea to be first to market. We see that a lot in the medical and biopharma markets. Company A spends hundreds of millions and years working to define a new treatment/device and fight for FDA approval and then larger competitors or generics come in an effectively capture portions of the market (sometimes major portions) without the “innovation.”

And in the software world it certainly works both ways. It wasn’t long ago we were all writing eulogies for the big ERP vendors as their “best of breed” competitors in supply chain and CRM were “out innovating them” and now we’ve done a 180 whereby the ERP vendors are so dominant it’s essentially a discussion of which one wins the platform war.

Zoli ponders an interesting question, Would you rather be first to market, or better?But forget panelist, let’s look at some of the truly big names in software. We would not have a Google today if Larry and Sergey simply had