A fuss over a five letter word….

I consider myself a reasonable fair person. In fact one of my biggest bug bears relates to fairness. Treat people fairly & typically I have learnt you get a lot in return. Some may say I’m a soft touch & maybe not hard enough, but I care little, if I can sleep at night, and then I am happy. So it saddens me to actually have to write this blog post. It relates to the fact that Autodesk Legal are now after the domain name of Revitforum.

http://www.revitforum.org/out-there/12753-revitforum-org-domain.html

As many of you know, I am passionate about the Revit technology. I have built my career & to some extent my reputation, for what that’s worth, on the use of Revit & the ability to share this passion with many others. The technology excites me, I live it, I breath it; am I best Revit user out there? No way! But I have helped write books, helped setup User groups, the list is endless. I would reckon I have given away more than I have got in return. But once again, I care little as I can sleep at night in the knowledge that my passion for this technology has somehow rubbed off on others. So to now hear that Autodesk Legal are now targeting a forum which has been setup to share the knowledge with others because it uses the word “Revit” in the domain is beyond comprehension. Trust me, I understand why Autodesk want to protect the Revit brand name, but this is beyond a joke. Now if you look at say Apple, there are hundreds of blogs & websites that use the word Apple & Mac; I don’t see Apple rushing around to steal back those domain names. When are Autodesk Legal going to recognise that sites like the Revitforum provide a quality service to its members through the use of knowledge sharing. I would even say that somebody needs to actually explain to the said Legal department, that the AEC industry now considers Revit as the tool of choice for delivering Building Information Models. Fundamental to BIM is a process which requires collaboration & knowledge sharing; that’s not me saying this, but industry thought leaders like Patrick McCleamy & many others who will remain nameless. So this Legal team wants to then target an industry which is trying to move forward & make a change by being disruptive just to protect the a name. If you actually stand back & think about this, its total madness. SO instead alienate the customer base who are actually your best spokespeople, just because of a five letter word. Whatever next? Lets hope some senior figure within the big A looks at this & recognises how “silly” this actually is.