-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John McKown Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2017 7:54 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Software vendor trying to force MSU based contract
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 3:00 AM, Dave Wade <[email protected]> wrote: > I am going to say something you gentlemen may not like... > > 1) Do you need the product? > 2) Do you need continued support, e.g. for legal and compliance reasons? > 3) is the company in financial difficulties? > > If the answer to all these is "yes" then paying the increased charges > may be your best option. If the company folds or files for protection > it matters not how many bits of paper you have, if there is no > business to honor the contracts you have then replacing the product > may be much more expensive. In my humble IBM is the biggest player of > these sorts of games and is doing an excellent job of squeezing the > last drop of blood from its traditional mainframe customers.. > > .. and throwing lawyers at a problem usually drives the costs up even > more... > <quote> I think you have some very valid points. I don't think that _any_ software company offers the following "option", but it is one that I'd like. What I _wish_ every company would "require" from a vendor is that should the vendor either "go out of business" or "sunset a product", that the customer would get a copy of the current source for the product, along with all internal documentation. No, I have not been taking any "funny pills". I do realize that perhaps all of the current z/OS vendors would like like hyenas if anyone asked this of them. Which is yet another reason that I am a FOSS advocate. An individual company might not be able to support "some product", but the "community" could possibly do so. </quote> Hmmm, The company will remain nameless, but several years ago I was dealing with a vendor (who will remain nameless) who had pretty much the same thing. They already had their software in escrow and were willing to provide source if they went out of business. We asked them, and they responded affirmatively - and put it in the contract - that if their company was sold to a large software vendor in New York that we would get their source code. Fortunately that never happened but some vendors are willing to go that step. Rex The information contained in this message is confidential, protected from disclosure and may be legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, distribution, copying, or any action taken or action omitted in reliance on it, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and destroy the material in its entirety, whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
