[wlug] Re: Term Of The Week: “RPA”

On Wed, 6 May 2020 12:30:05 +1200, I wrote:

Came across this phrase “robotic process automation” (RPA) <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/05/sba_rpa_ban/> which seems to be just another name for “web-scraping”.

OK, there is a bit more to it than that. Microsoft’s latest acquisition <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/20/microsoft_buys_softomotive/> uses “a combination of screenshots, image recognition and OCR” in order to control how to pull an app’s puppet strings. Which makes me wonder: what happened to the app’s original source code? Unless it’s a proprietary app from another vendor; OK, but I can imagine certain vendors demanding an extra licence fee for this kind of use. Because, why not?