Finding a common theme amongst the articles in this issue of HardCopy has not been easy, but as I read through them, it got me thinking about one of the many ways in which the software industry is changing.

As many have pointed out before me, software is unlike most industries in that the customer does not purchase the product as such, but rather the right to use it. Purchase a car, for example, and there is nothing to stop you from selling it on to someone else; making money by using it as a taxi; or taking it apart and selling the parts individually. Buy software, though, and you would be in big trouble if you tried any of those things without the explicit permission of the publisher, which would cost you a great deal of money if it was for sale at all. This is because you are not buying the software itself, but rather the right to use it under strictly limited conditions.

The other big difference is that most software publishers take little or no responsibility for the quality of the product itself. If the steering wheel of your car came off in your hands after you’ve owned it for just a week, then in all likelihood the retailer would take full responsibility, no questions asked. If your new spreadsheet application crashes, taking with it a mission-critical document, it’s highly unlikely that the software publisher is going to accept any liability at all.

There are historical reasons why this is so. Certainly, back in the early 1980s we were thankful to have anything that worked at all. However expectations have changed, particularly as we begin to consider software to be a service rather than a product. More and more applications are becoming dependent on services delivered across the Internet, which is why concepts like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are growing in popu