Is RaceCAD Design a Clone of Alibre Design?

reprinted by permission of Ralph Grabowski, editor

October 28, 2003

See Also

·  Alibre Pursues RaceCAD for Stealing Source Code - TenLinks, October 24, 2003  ·  Code Thieves Strike Again - Texas-based Alibre alleges that a terminated employee is illegally distributing a product called RaceCAD, which is nothing but a copy of Alibre Design, Sebastian Rupley, PC Magazine, October 24, 2003  ·  Alibre website  ·  Alibre reviews - on CADdigest.com

Alibre and others say, "Yes," but RaceCAD says, "No." From what I have seen, though, the weight of evidence seems to be on Alibre's side.

In addition to Alibre, the OpenDWG Alliance, D-Cubed, and Spatial Technologies claim the software contains unlicensed code. At issue is the perceived reliability of Russian programmers; can they be trusted by American software vendors? It is important for the Russian government to take action - if it is willing, or able.

RaceCAD v1.01 was launched April 26, 2003 at its Russian-language website <www.racecad.nm.ru>. During the summer, the CAD software was hosted at three mirror sites. In early October, anonymous messages announced the English version on English-language CAD forums, including cadcamforum.net, cadalog.com, and industrycommunity.com. (There were no responses to the messages, ironically enough.)

In mid-October, a customer alerts Alibre that RaceCAD Design appears identical to Alibre Design, no doubt having seen the English messages posted days earlier. Alibre CEO Paul Grayson decides to take action in a very public way. He contacts the police, the FBI, the news media, Russian software developers, and the websites hosting the software.

As a result of the article in last Monday's issue of upFront.eZine, Alibre receives sufficient information by Tuesday to determine the name of the person behind RaceCAD. He is a former Alibre employee who had returned to Russia after being fired by Alibre. "He was actually a good programmer, just very unstable," an Alibre spokesman tells me.

Alibre examines the RaceCAD v1.02 code to find the Java class release number is 5.1 - the same release number Alibre was when the programmer left. While RaceCAD tells me that their software is not collaborative, Alibre finds that the code contains all the needed collaboration classes.

Wednesday, Alibre makes contact with the programmer, who admits to having the code. [To upFront.eZine, however, he continues to deny cloning Alibre; see interview below.] He attempts to settle with Alibre: Let me have the "Russian version of Alibre Design" in return for discontinuing the English version. Alibre doesn't go along with the offer; they want all versions removed from websites, and the source code destroyed.

Also on Wednesday, Alibre posts ads on Google warning in English and Russian that RaceCAD is illegal. "Do Not download & risk legal action. Alibre Design is the legal product."

As well, Alibre hires Joe Greco to perform independent analyses of both CAD programs. The similarities of screen shots, exported STEP data, internal file names, and program structure are posted at http://www.alibre.com/news/mediaroom/racecad.

Thursday, Alibre sends out a press release detailing further similarities between Alibre and RaceCAD, such as the pixel-for-pixel match for every icon. The press release is repeated by PC Magazine and other online publications.

Friday, the programmer agrees to stop distributing RaceCAD. Monday, both the Russian and English downloads pages are "404 Not Found" - unavailable.

Grayson laments, "Probably the most we can hope for is to get him indicted for a felony, which would make it impossible for him to leave Russia even for a vacation without fear of being extradited back here for trial."

I interviewed by email last week the anonymous person behind RaceCAD. Tellingly, he refused to identify himself, even after three requests. The differences between the story from Alibre and from RaceCAD made me think I was listening to two different conversations.

Monday, October 20, 2003

upFront.eZine: "Is RaceCAD built from the Alibre source code?"

RaceCAD: "No, it's not. It's an independent product, developed in Russia since 1994, and we have a lot of customers.

"Alibre uses 'black' PR technology, because they are afraid of competition. If someone does similar that they do, it doesn't mean it's their clone. RaceCAD is similar to Alibre [as Alibre is] similar to SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor, etc.

"As we know, Alibre is promoted as collaboration CAD tool, but RaceCAD is not; it's oriented to individual customers. It's not our problem if Alibre loses their customers; it's a problem of Alibre if they failed to make competitive product."

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

upFront.eZine: "Alibre claims your product is based on source code stolen from the Russian programmers who do work for Alibre."

RaceCAD: "Interesting. How can one person steal source code of EVERYTHING? Think about this."

upFront.eZine: "Very easily. It happened two years ago to SolidWorks, when a disgruntled employee at an Indian software contractor stole the entire source code. He had access to all of it, because he was employed as a debugger. Read the full story at http://www.upfrontezine.com/upf-307.htm.

"As proof, Alibre says that RaceCAD contains a beta release of a subset of ACIS unique to Alibre Design."

RaceCAD: "We made this ACIS R10 build specially for Alibre :) Since it's not pure ACIS, but with our kernel-level changes."

upFront.eZine: "So you have done contract work for Alibre, and would have access to the source code."

RaceCAD: "Do you understand what this sign :) means? We meant that Alibre said that this build was made specially for Alibre, but RaceCAD's ACIS is our custom-build made just for RaceCAD."

upFront.eZine: "Reading your website, I find it interesting that: (1) you have almost no documentation for a product that you have worked on since 1994 [just two pages, which RaceCAD customers complain about]; and (2) the people behind the product are kept anonymous [another complaint of RaceCAD customers]. Only people with something to hide keep themselves hidden."

RaceCAD: "As you know, normally business is done offline in Russia, and Web is secondary thing. Early on, we didn't feel any need to present us online. Recently we decided to try the overseas market. We have a lot of documentation, and if it's not online yet, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

"Early on, our product was called EDS (Engineering Dialog System), but we decided to change the name in order to prevent conflict with the EDS company (Solid Edge)."

upFront.eZine: "How are you trying the overseas market? In any case, the overseas market would not be interested in dealing with people who keep themselves hidden."

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

upFront.eZine: "Have you seen Alibre's Google ad? It comes up when you enter 'racecad'."

RaceCAD: "So what? They can do everything they want and spend their money as they want. Or you suggest us to change name? :)"

upFront.eZine: "You may need to. 'Race' means fast. But in North America, 'race' also implies prejudice, as in the word 'racist.' There is a German CAD package called FelixCAD. Here in North America, 'Felix' is the name of a cartoon cat, so they changed the name for sales in North America.

"The OpenDWG Alliance says your product uses their APIs, but that you are not members of the organization, therefore are using the code illegally. In addition, Spatial is looking into your use of their ACIS libraries, for which they say you have no license to use."

RaceCAD: "We never said that we had licenses of that software, but it's another story."

upFront.eZine: "Tell me the story. If you really did develop RaceCAD legally, why do you keep your identity secret?"

RaceCAD: "Do we have to disclose it?"

upFront.eZine: "Yes."

Thursday, October 23, 2003

upFront.eZine: "I understand you are now negotiating with Alibre over the future of RaceCAD."

RaceCAD: "No. And one more time, RaceCAD is not the Alibre clone. If you want to tell us something useful go ahead, otherwise you tire us by useless bulls**t."

Friday, October 24, 2003

upFront.eZine: "I have Alibre's side of the story, through their emails to me and their press release. I think you might like the chance to present your side."

RaceCAD: "OK. Here is an our point, again: RaceCAD is not an Alibre clone. Alibre loses their potential customers; this is why they are going to do everything to fight with RaceCAD. And in this situation US justice will say that they are right (since in such conflicts US companies are always right; it doesn't matter what happened, and it's general US guideline).

"But thing is, we are under Russian jurisdiction, and according to Russian laws, we don't do anything illegal. Otherwise, Alibre could easily close our site if we did something illegal, couldn't it?

"They talk about that it's illegal, but they failed to refer us to any Russian law we are in violation. Only 'illegal' thing we do, we compete with them, but competition is not prohibited even by US law.

"Don't you think that cost of CAD packages are quite expensive? Designers have to pay about 1000 bucks just for nothing. Our mission is to rescue designers, and make this market more competitive -- offer a free alternative to 1000-buck products. [RaceCAD planned to charge US$200 for the English version.] Similar has already happened in other areas, say GIMP / PhotoShop in graphical design.

"But monsters like SolidWorks, Autodesk, and Alibre don't want to lose their money. Money: that's the key thing. Not legality, morals, etc. And if Alibre didn't fight with us, someone else would do it.

"About the our name. Race came from word racing. Street racing is the hobby of our team."

upFront.eZine: "I think customers want products that are reasonably priced. I don't mind paying $1,000 for software that will make me 100x more money.

"I have been writing about the CAD industry for 17 years. In that time, I have seen many firms offer CAD for cheap, and then fail. The ideals of Star Trek's cash-less society are myth, because humans are not intrinsically good.

"Your reasoning is flawed, because CAD is expensive to develop and support. It has to be $1,000, because any lower price will cause your company to eventually fail financially."

RaceCAD: "Sure, since they have to pay money for rewards of bunch of useless managers. You forgot about think3, who has different sales model. These Russian companies have good product with good prices: ADEM - www.adem.ru
T-Flex - www.tflex.ru
3D Compass - www.ascon.ru

"But why do you think they are not in the US market?" [T-Flex is marketed in the US.]

upFront.eZine: "The other flaw in your reasoning is that people will not switch CAD packages just to pay a lower price. Again and again, CAD vendors have offered competitive upgrades, which usually fail. Readers of my newsletter indicate that the security of sticking with what they have is important to them for many reasons."

RaceCAD: "Exactly. Big companies prefer to buy well known brands, rather than stuff like Alibre or RaceCAD. But for small customers like owner of shops with two machines, price is the main thing."

upFront.eZine: "You cannot compete on the basis of price."

RaceCAD: "You are not god, future will tell us who was right."

Evan Yares of the OpenDWG Alliance tells me: "We have determined that RaceCAD includes the copyrighted OpenDWG Alliance software libraries. There is no indication that the people behind RaceCAD are bona fide members of the Alliance, or have any rights to use our libraries."

"Like Alibre Design, we use developers based in Russia. A number of other significant CAD developers also do so. It is critical that, when there are problems such as this, the Russian government responds (as the Indian government did in the case with SolidWorks last year) to avoid a loss of confidence and the potential loss of many millions of dollars in foreign trade revenue.

"I talked to my developers at SoftDev in St. Petersburg. (They do work for a half-dozen well-known CAD companies.) They are livid. After spending years to develop the trust and confidence to do work for major CAD developers, this person comes along and makes a mess of things."

Mike Payne of Spatial tells me, "I would doubt that they made [ACIS] kernel level changes, certainly the version that we delivered to Alibre was the same as to all other customers. And I can tell you that I believe that the appropriate authorities are investigating this theft of Alibre's source code (which we think includes ACIS)."

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