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Author Archive: bfwebster

Webster is Principal and Founder at at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor for the BYU Computer Science Department. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at 303.502.4141 or at bwebster@bfwa.com.

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Telsa alleges theft of intellectual property

January 26, 2017
Telsa alleges theft of intellectual property

From the article by Jordan Golson over at Verge: The complaint, filed in California Superior Court, County of Santa Clara, alleges that Anderson attempted to recruit at least 12 Tesla engineers to a new self-driving venture that he and Urmson were starting, in violation of Anderson’s non-solicitation agreement, and that Anderson took confidential Tesla information […]

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Another $1 billion troubled system project

January 11, 2017
Another $1 billion troubled system project

A few years ago, I posted about the Air Force’s abandoned $1 billion effort to consolidate all its many accounting systems. Now it appears the State of California is going through similar difficulties: State officials have failed to remedy problems that have contributed to a two-year delay for a new computer system and cost increases […]

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BanxCorp v. Costco et al. — Can you copyright the result of a calculation?

February 24, 2014 0 Comments
BanxCorp v. Costco et al. — Can you copyright the result of a calculation?

From 2011 to 2013, I served as an expert witness in BanxCorp d/b/a BanxQuote v. Costco Wholesale Corporation et al., a copyright infringement case in the US District Court, Southern District of New York. To quote from the summary judgment opinion issued in this case by Judge Kenneth M. Karas (note — I have omitted […]

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UK Universal Credit project — complete write-off of code?

November 5, 2013 0 Comments
UK Universal Credit project — complete write-off of code?

I’ve written twice before (here and here) about the severe problems with the British government’s Universal Credit project. From my first post: The British government has spent roughly half a billion pounds ($750M) developing a new IT system for its welfare services, with the goal of cutting down on fraud and loss. The project, by all accounts, has […]

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An approach to software release

October 10, 2013 3 Comments
An approach to software release

The following excerpt is taken — with a few minor edits — from a white paper I wrote on quality assurance back in the late 1990s for a large corporate client. Given the rather intense coverage of the failings of the Healthcare.gov website — which clearly was not ready for prime time — I thought […]

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