@Anonymous
i think you are mixing some things together here and perhaps oversimplifying the issue.
First of all - i agree that one should share the model in-house, and it is absolutely the right and only way to do it. I do disagree that there is no merit in the ability to lock or password protect editable capabilities of individual components of the model when sharing it with consultants or collaborating firms.
Your comment about Google and Microsoft - is a very different topic. Here you are talking about open source software. The benefit of open source software is that the speed, quality and content developed through an open source project is going to be significantly better than running an equivalent project in house -in all respects. If there are contributors of course.
This is not the same as collaborating in Revit. At least not in our experience. I don’t have a consultant calling me and saying - “hey - i just got your model, and i have this awesome family we built that is a little lighter or a little more parametric than the one in your model - so i just upgraded you to this one!” Or “ hey - we created this in-office template and workflow - you should grab it from us, or let me load it in for you “
So this is in response to your “ give them a chance”.
I don’t have an issue giving the client my model. I often do. However - let's not oversimplify it. The model is not their property. The model is the property of whichever party is named in your contract as the owner. It is not blanket ownership by default. But my concern is not the client.
If the client comes to me and asks for the deliverable to be the BIM model - Great! this is something i know upfront, just like the project you are referring to for the University. That's fine! i know what i am selling to them and the cost of my project reflects that. The problem happens when this is NOT the deliverable, but only is a portion of the regular process or collaboration and you have no way of protecting your content from changes or from copying. I don’t have an agreement with all team members that they can take any content of mine while collaborating on a project and then are free to reuse it in their other work as they please. I also don’t give them the right to accidentally or knowingly adjust content that i placed, without any way of me knowing that that has been done.
Perhaps you have not yet had an issue with this - but it does happen. Elements get edited, changed, altered somewhere in the process and often remain unnoticed till that is an issue during construction. Who is responsible then? And absolutely - individual components, set-ups, costom families, graphiscs and settings within workflow get "exported" by others and reused on projects that have no relation to the original creator-firm.
What i struggle to understand is why someone wouldn’t want this to be at least an option?
If you feel like you don’t need it - great! Don’t use the password protection!… Why are you worried that someone else uses it? If you think no one ever steals or changes the models or its content without consent - then go ahead and continue as you have been.. It wouldn’t affect you at all.. just don't add a password..
Are you thinking others might use it when you don't want them to?