The Shape of Code

The British and Irish Legal Information Institute provides “Access to Freely Available British and Irish Public Legal Information”. Searching the England and Wales High Court (Technology and Construction Court) Decisions throws up some interesting reading (when searching on software).

For those who have never seen a decent sized project go wrong from the inside, DE BEERS UK LIMITED (Formerly: THE DIAMOND TRADING COMPANY LIMITED) vs. ATOS ORIGIN IT SERVICES UK LIMITED provides a well written example. De Beers contracted Atos to write some software. The development of the software did not go well. Were the original requirements/spec underdone or were subsequent personnel not up to the job? Difficult to tell from the Decision, as is the reason Atos thought they had a chance of winning a court case.

SAP UK LIMITED vs. DIAGEO GREAT BRITAIN LIMITED was a licensing dispute, or more accurately an example of why it is important to check what your third-party software gets up to. Diageo had signed a licensing agreement with SAP and 5,800 Diageo users had used a Salesforce.com app which, unknown to them, made use of SAP. The end result was a bill for £55 million, which Diageo had not been expecting.

There are probably more interesting cases to learn from, but I am supposed to be writing a book in my ‘spare’ time.