I was afraid this was going to turn into a religious war over keys, which was not the question I asked.
> what's the REAL problem THAT YOU ARE HAVING In my mind, and my experience as both a mainframe software designer and as the former CEO of a mainframe software company, the number one real problem that keys solve is the "endless trial." At my former company, before I added keys to the product, I had sales reps come to me almost in tears because a prospect was telling them "we really love your product and are definitely going to buy it ... but my boss is in a really bad mood and I am not going to go to him for a P.O. this month" ... month after month. Our standard response was to threaten a cease-and-desist letter, but then the prospect would say "well, if you do that, I can tell you we will definitely not buy your product." After we added keys, that whole situation reversed. The sales reo could tell the prospect "if you can get me a P.O. this week I can see if I can't extend your trial by 14 days." > I've seen ONE case where a customer was using licensed software illegitimately Well, here's another one, from about two months ago. A customer (household name company) running the pre-key version of my product turned out to be running 11 LPARs when licensed for two, and took the negotiating position "because your software does not contain keys to prevent this we have implicit permission to run it on as many LPARs as we like" (contrary to the written terms of the license). (Anyone who says the solution is a lawsuit is not familiar with the realities of the American jurisprudence system.) Yes, they have now agreed to a negotiated settlement. At my former company we had one prospect/trial that we always suspected was continuing to run the product be we could never be sure. I have a current associate who owns mainframe software without keys. There is strong circumstantial evidence that a customer is using it on more CPUs than it is licensed for, but the customer denies it, there is no proof, and it does not seem practical to pursue the matter. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Phil Smith Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 7:25 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Ever see "automatic" 30-day trials for mainframe software? Steve Comstock wrote: >Also, what about the shop that tries to locate the end date and zap it? >You may say it doesn't happen but I have heard tales... OK, I know this is going to turn into a religious issue, but here's my $0.02. In 30+ years I've never seen this. I've seen ONE case where a customer was using licensed software illegitimately (on an extra CPU)-and that was an oversight: when it was recognized, it was a full-price bluebird for the sales rep, who was NOT unhappy at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
