It bothered me a bit

There were a lot great sessions on service catalogs at ITSMF Fusion last week, but a couple bothered me.

One, by a vendor who shall remain nameless, was just plain wrong. Self-service is cool, but it's not a complete ITIL v3 catalog or portfolio. The recommendations on running a project are unlikely to work, their approach is more like to result in lack of adoption. 

So while I'm happy about the buzz, it's now buyer beware.  But that's just difference of opinions.  The other one is more serious...

The other session, by a consultant, used material directly from our catalog book, diagrams, and even product screenshots from newScale products without attribution or copyright notices.  Worse, they represent another vendor -- so if you listen to their best practices and see their catalog example, you might think a) this vendor knows how to get me there, b) that's what my catalog from that VENDOR will look like.  Neither of those things is true.

While I'm happy to share stuff (and we have a whole community on-line for this purpose), it's generally advisable to attribute other people's work and never pass someone's else's product as your own.

So I'm left with a riddle: should I call them out on this blog?  Your thoughts would be welcome.

Comments

[The IT Skeptic]

Stealing other people's IP is pretty low. When it happened to me http://www.itskeptic.org/node/646, I fired a warning shot - i emailed them and they took it down (in my case it was a webpage). Basically a "cease and desist" note. If this does not produce profuse apologies and an oath never to do it again (and some crap excuse as to why it happened), then I'd out them. This guy is pretty stupid so people have a right to know when someone that dumb is about :-D

[Rodrigo Flores]

Thanks Rob. I'm going to try to contact them. Frankly, they are welcome to the materials but they need to attribute it correctly. I'm happy to provide it.

Any other consultant I wouldn't care so much. But they have a big "press release" on how they are a preferred, chosen, olympic-class implementer of Service Catalogs for one of the vowally-challenged big four (HeychBee? Bemk? kaah?? aibem?).

And they use our product screenshots! What is that about?! You are selling a product that looks so poor, you put your competitor's products as your own? THAT is a new one for me. (I guess it's like faking your picture in Internet dating)

But life is tough for a reseller of a vowally-challenged vendor. No reference customers, no demonstrable product, no content, and no implementation best practices for service catalogs; every one of these guys chasing the one CMDB ring to unite them all. In these hard economic times, buying a vowel is not easy.

In my country, my whole family of 10 could only afford one vowel which we shared once every two weeks between my brothers and sisters; My name then was Rdrg (pronounced Argh -Dargh, which means He Who Blogs Til It's Not Funny --life was tough, I tell you.)

(Full Disclosure: I stole this joke) :)

[Mark]

There would be no doubt that it is wrong to steal another company's hardware - but stealing another company's IP somehow is not considered as bad. I saw the presentation in question and it made me sick to watch people take credit for work they did not do.