Ross Tech Zip Code

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Thedistributed ledger technology known as blockchain currently is the subject of numerous research projects, especially in the financial services and technology industries. Perhaps not surprisingly, many companies involved in these projects are filing patent applications to protect their innovations, both in the U.S. and abroad. In an August 2016 report, the World Economic Forum reported that more than 2,500 such patents had been filed in the past three years. It also is widely reported that many companies working in this space are leveraging software code that is governed by various open-source licenses. The variety of these licenses and the particular uses by companies of the code that is licensed under them raise a host of issues that, to the uninitiated, could result in significant consequences, including potentially an adverse impact on the ability to enforce any patents that are based on the used (or modified) code.

This article provides an overview of these issues, including a basic description of blockchain technology, a review of the most popular open-source licenses being used in this space, and a summary of how those licenses might impact the enforceability of any patents based on the licensed code.

The U.S. Congress is sending President Donald Trump legislation that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military.

The legislation, part of the Pentagon's spending bill, was drafted after a Reuters investigation last year found software makers allowed a Russian defense agency to hunt for vulnerabilities in software used by some agencies of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon and intelligence services.

Security experts said allowing Russian authorities to probe the internal workings of software, known as source code, could help Moscow discover vulnerabilities they could exploit to more easily attack U.S. government systems.

"The Department of Defense and other federal agencies must be aware of foreign source code exposure and other risky business practices that can make our national security systems vulnerable to adversaries," she said.

Tommy Ross, a senior director for policy at the industry group The Software Alliance, said software companies had concerns that such legislation could force companies to choose between selling to the U.S. and foreign markets.

"We are seeing a worrying trend globally where companies are looking at cyber threats and deciding the best way to mitigate risk is to hunker down and close down to the outside world," Ross told Reuters last week.

In order to sell in the Russian market, technology companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, SAP SE and McAfee have allowed a Russian defense agency to scour software source code for vulnerabilities, the Reuters investigation found last year.

In many cases, Reuters found that the software companies had not informed U.S. agencies that Russian authorities had been allowed to conduct the source code reviews. In most cases, the U.S. military does not require comparable source code reviews before it buys software, procurement experts have told Reuters.

The companies had previously said the source code reviews were conducted by the Russians in company-controlled facilities, where the reviewer could not copy or alter the software. The companies said those steps ensured the process did not jeopardize the safety of their products.

Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

Ross, we're super excited that you're here to talk to us today about a really cool topic. But before we get really deep into that, just want to ask you to tell us a little bit about your career path. How did you become an IT leader? You know, I could maybe even ask the question of, you know, what did you do to set some bad karma to be an IT leader? Or, walk us through that journey.

So, I found even as an accountant, you know, it was almost impossible to avoid the force of technology on the work that I was doing. And there was a very strong allegiance between the two until eventually, I realized that accounting was really not the trajectory that I wanted to stay on, despite the fact that I had achieved a great deal. And I took a position with the drilling company here in Calgary in 2006 as a project manager, BA, basically running all of their systems and all of their data and reporting. And that was really my foray into IT. That was when I first began working in an IT department.

And the thing that I found really magical, if you will, about that time was the fact that with all of this accounting and finance background that I had, now supporting and directly maintaining those systems for the accountants within that company, there was a real sympatico in the language that we spoke, in our very quick understanding of each other. I was very empathetic to what it was they were trying to accomplish with the systems or with the reporting that they were looking for. And I think that that allowed us to really advance the position of IT within the company and, you know, into that trusted partner type of position that every IT group aspires towards. And then from there, I've never really looked back, you know, seven years at that company, handling all manner of systems in ERP work and then over to where I am today with Calfrac Well Services, in a manager role overlooking their enterprise applications portfolio and then ultimately to my current role as director of IT. So, it's definitely had some pivots and turns along the way. But there's always ways to leverage the transferable parts of it and build on top of that all the way through the journey.

Ross, it makes a little sense that someone who's coming from another discipline outside of IT, at the root of their career, might have some of the perspective that you have around the future of IT. And that is the big question this week. The question is, does IT have a place in the in the business of the future? And when we were preparing for this episode, you surprised us a little bit by saying that maybe, maybe it doesn't, at least not in the way that we understand it now. I was hoping we could get started on that question by just having a little bit of context. What do you mean by that, and what's the perspective that you think is going to be influencing IT in the future?

Ross, can I follow up there really quickly? When you're talking about this blurring, can you help us understand a couple of the key factors that are driving this blurring? I mean, I think at a very high level, we understand from our conversations with other CIOs that business and technology are intertwining because of that value creation. But what are some of the other factors that you see that are driving that intermeshing, and what do they look like in practice?

Yeah, for sure. So, there's a few things really in play. And it's partly rooted in the value creation that you're talking about. But, you know, let's go back to the beginning of Covid and bring it forward, because really what I'm speaking about here today is a shift that I've seen both in the business, which is where you would expect the shift to come from. It's a shift in demand. It's a shift in expectation, but also from within IT, where I think we're seeing IT leaders and even IT teams at a technical level recognizing that something has changed.

So, if we go back to the beginning of Covid, when we think about that sort of that brief golden age in a CIO's life where we were able to get our organizations resituated from the office to home very quickly. Many of us did it in a very secure way. And we were applauded for that. We had some recognition at very senior levels within our companies. These are things that are well written about. But we also, you know, be careful what you wish for or maybe you're a victim of your own success to some degree.

It's such a good point that you bring up in, you know, looking at 2020 and it's moving so quickly. There was a lot of speed, a lot of agility. The business has now set expectations. So, IT needs to continuously, you know, keep up with those expectations. But what -- what do they give up then? What do we give up as IT leaders -- do you give up governance? Do you give up your standards? Do you give up, you know, the way you normally operate? And then what sort of risk does that do with the business for the business or add to the business? So, I guess my question is, have you seen any particular things? Maybe it's change management, maybe it's governance that are the biggest things that need to adapt to this new structure in order for IT to keep up with the business.

Yeah, so there's a few things, actually. And you know, your comment about change management is certainly a very interesting one. But this is all at the heart of kind of how we would do this and what it would look like at the end. So, change management, first off, is a challenging one at the best of times. I think we all in IT have ample scar tissue from when change management initiatives have not been done well or where it's been relegated to too late in a project or under-resourced, etc. So, change management is a very sensitive one. I do actually find the change management works very well already. It's kind of a natural affinity to being run by the business because in essence, if you think about it, change management positions in the business really represents the business acting in a caring and empathetic way for itself, taking care of itself. Whereas if IT assigns a change manager for, you know, a significant initiative, technology initiative, it's really going to have a clinical technology flavor to it, or at least there's a risk that it will. The business already speaks the business language. So, having changed management, there is a great area to start. I have seen that actually work very well on some large ERP projects within the last couple of years.

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