What is Your Software Worth?

This article presents a method for valuing software based on the income that use of that software is expected to generate in the future. Well-known principles of intellectual property (IP) valuation, sales expectations, discounting to present value, and the like, are applied, always focusing on the benefits and costs of software. A major issue, not dealt with in the literature of valuing intangibles, is that software is continually upgraded. Applying depreciation schedules is the simple solution, but does not represent at all the actual devaluation of the inherent IP of software. A realistic approach, allowing ongoing maintenance, is presented here. All steps of the process are presented and then integrated via a simple quantitative example. Having a quantitative model on a spreadsheet allows exploration of business alternatives. An example a service model is evaluated. Conclusions are drawn that reflect on academic and business practice.Valuation, intellectual property, software, software life, maintenance

Follow the Intellectual Property, How does Industry pay Programmers' Salaries when they move the related IP rights to offshore taxhavens?"

In the ongoing discussion about offshoring in the computer and data-processing industries, the 2006 ACM report Globalization and Offshoring of Software addressed job shifts due to globalization in the software industry. But jobs represent only half of the labor and capital equation in business. In today’s high-technology industries, intellectual property (IP) supplies the other half, the capital complement. Offshoring IP always accompanies offshoring jobs and, while less visible, may be a major driver of job transfer. The underlying economic model—involving ownership of profits, taxation, and compensation of workers from the revenue their products generate—has not been explicated and is largely unknown in the computer science community. This article presents the issue of software income allocation and the role IP plays in offshoring. It also tries to explain why computer experts lack insight into the economics of software, from investments made, to profits accumulated, to capital becoming available for investment in new projects and jobs.Offshoring, offshore outsourcing, tax havens, job loss, intellectual property, tax avoidance, non-routine profits

Follow the Intellectual Property, How does Industry pay Programmers' Salaries when they move the related IP rights to offshore taxhavens?"

In the ongoing discussion about offshoring in the computer and data-processing industries, the 2006 ACM report Globalization and Offshoring of Software addressed job shifts due to globalization in the software industry. But jobs represent only half of the labor and capital equation in business. In today’s high-technology industries, intellectual property (IP) supplies the other half, the capital complement. Offshoring IP always accompanies offshoring jobs and, while less visible, may be a major driver of job transfer. The underlying economic model—involving ownership of profits, taxation, and compensation of workers from the revenue their products generate—has not been explicated and is largely unknown in the computer science community. This article presents the issue of software income allocation and the role IP plays in offshoring. It also tries to explain why computer experts lack insight into the economics of software, from investments made, to profits accumulated, to capital becoming available for investment in new projects and jobs

What is Your Software Worth?

This article presents a method for valuing software based on the income that use of that software is expected to generate in the future. Well-known principles of intellectual property (IP) valuation, sales expectations, discounting to present value, and the like, are applied, always focusing on the benefits and costs of software. A major issue, not dealt with in the literature of valuing intangibles, is that software is continually upgraded. Applying depreciation schedules is the simple solution, but does not represent at all the actual devaluation of the inherent IP of software. A realistic approach, allowing ongoing maintenance, is presented here. All steps of the process are presented and then integrated via a simple quantitative example. Having a quantitative model on a spreadsheet allows exploration of business alternatives. An example a service model is evaluated. Conclusions are drawn that reflect on academic and business practice

True-copy token scheme for a distributed database system

A concurrency and resiliency control scheme for a distributed database system with replicated data is discussed. The scheme, true-copy token scheme, uses true-copy tokens in order to designate the physical data copies (true copies) that can be identified with the current logical data that are globally unique, and then it realizes consistent execution of transactions by the locking over these true copies. If subsystem failures occur and if some true copies are lost, the scheme regenerates lost true copies so that their continuity is preserved. In analyzing the true-copy token scheme, we establish a precise relationship between physical transactions and their corresponding logical transactions by data and time abstraction. Then we show that continuity of logical data is preserved if con­tinuity of true copies is preserved.Key Words and Phrases: distributed database system, concurrency control, resiliency control, replicated data, true-copy tokens, data abstraction, time abstractio