ANALOG DEVICES Signal Chain Designer TOOL USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

Me no like But me no cry Me go buy from the other guy

Ouch.

Bad idea. Possibly one that is going to backfire on them.

That would be the time to walk away from the table. Which I assume you did.

Actually they tossed me... as not a good fit... obviously >:-} ...Jim Thompson

Good one! ...Jim Thompson

O come all designers, I'll tell ye a tale. Of Anal Devices, and how they did fail.

They released a product, for models in SPICE, that runs in the cloud space, and isn't too nice.

It captures your input, for "internal use". They own all your bases, which they can abuse.

So withhold your designs, and send a report. to your favorite lawyer, Who'll see them in court.

It's not my "IP", it sort of came from an entry into our wedding book by the wife of a former colleague. She is from the island of Malta. Ends with ...

Me go marry millionaire But if he die me no cry me go marry another guy

I think there's not enough of the original in there for that to be considered a derivative work, but IANAPTL. ;-)

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Nice!

Jim Thompson Inscribed thus:

Mmm. Someone felt threatened... ;-)

Possibly. Must have been the VP of Marketing. The engineers (Paul Rako was one) knew me by name and we had a good old time talking.

But I recently had someone feel threatened at NXP (Tempe). Four people I talked to thought I walked on water. Then they brought in the PhD who proceeded to ask me circuit questions... he did not take it well when I pointed out that he was _wrong_ on multiple topics ;-) ...Jim Thompson

This *was* indeed the case, so I started poking around with our legal department (disclaimer - I'm a longtime ADI employee). To make a long story short, it was never ADI's intent to own the universe but the guy who wrote the old ULA didn't understand so he wrote something legal, but silly. It took a while for the usual big-company bureaucratic reasons, but there's a new ULA that's much more sensible and customer-friendly, and it's been up for some months now.

You no longer need fear that your IP will be assimilated.

I wouldn't put my IP on anyone's site... no way. I think encrypted Spice models and proprietary simulators are really bad marketing ideas. Do you think some board developer is going to use only Analog Devices' or only TI's parts? ...Jim Thompson

imited to ADI internal use only."

No wonder you're so confused by so many other things.

That last point is really the main one. Having to cobble together various partial sims from different proprietary software is a _huge_ lose. LT stole the high ground back in about 2000 when they released a major fraction of their internal design tools free for everybody. It was a brilliant move.

Designers have had well over a decade to get used to that situation, and _now_ TI and AD are taking their marbles and going home?

Sorry, guys, won't fly with me at least. I like TI and AD parts, but in situations where sims are vital, I won't be using yours.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Phil, that's an entirely separate issue, and certainly a valid one. I was only pointing out that the objection originally raised had been resolved.

Steve

Thanks, Phil, for emphasizing (and clarifying :-) my point! I don't understand the reasoning behind TI and Analog going encrypted. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

And... to "twist-in" my point, I will be giving free to the public such models as...

derived strictly from the datasheet _and_ which will simulate on any old simulator.... mix and match >:-}

Requests for specific models are hereby solicited. ...Jim Thompson

Hi, Steve,

I think it's really unlikely in our current regulatory and surveillance environment that many people are going to upload their crown jewels to AD's web site, EULA or no EULA.

I mean, if you folks misappropriate other people's IP, what's a court going to do to you? Make you refund the $0 they paid?

Not to mention ITAR, the Commerce Department, and other ways that Big Brother is doing his oafish best to shut down US engineering. No way am I putting anything at all sensitive on a cloud drive unencrypted, let alone uploading it to a site run by folks who may be really tight with some of my larger competitors.

Anybody stupid enough to do something like that deserves what he gets, but that doesn't excuse the stupidity of AD and TI in this regard.

A behavioural model, however accurate, doesn't put your IP at risk--it's just a magic black box. So it's clearly an attempt at commercial domination, which won't fly with me at least.

If you really cared about the interests of your customers, you could get your SPICE guy together with Mike Engelhardt and whoever does TINA, and figure out a common encryption method that would allow whatever improvements you want to provide (e.g. LTspice's switcher models, which run like the bomb) without jeopardizing _your_ crown jewels.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Nah, I'm thinking if TI or AD has a killer part you'll use it, and you'll fudge something into the simulation if you have to. (It will end up costing more.)

Otherwise I totally agree. (I don't do a lot of simulations, but when I do I almost always end up putting numbers from the spec sheet into some "standard" opamp model... LTspice replaced EWB on my computer back when win95 went away.) George H.

I didn't say I wouldn't AD and TI parts in general, only that when simulation is critical, they'd lose out by their strategy. And if simulation isn't critical, why bother trotting out their own proprietary program?

I'm not at all persuaded by Steve Goldstein's reassurances about IP--why else would AD donate all that computing power as well as the free software? It sure doesn't look like altruism when they're proposing to force all of us onto their platform. Even Bill Gates was more modest than that, at least in his better moments. And if they _were_ crooks, they'd say exactly the same things.

It's been well said, apropos Gmail and suchlike, "If it's free, you aren't the customer, you're the product." LTspice at least runs everywhere, and (afaik) doesn't send your design info to Guangdong or wherever the support group sits.

Ah well, algebra still works, assuming that the marketing department hasn't put _too_ many lies into the datasheet this time round.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs