Tom Brennan wrote: >Same here. Instead of escrow or source code supplied to an end user, I think >it would be far better for folks to consider someone else to take over should >a product be left behind (for whatever reason). For example, the code could >be given or sold to Rocket/Dino/Serena/etc. and hopefully get some long-term >support.
Sure, that would be better. Not always an option; I can think of at least one case where a large vendor decided to kill an entire product line that had a moderate number (more than 50, maybe less than 100, not sure) live customers. A smaller vendor offered to take over the maintenance and split it with the large vendor; the discussions never even got to the point of "Split how?" - the large vendor said "Naw, not interested", and that was it, they screwed the customers. I was astonished-seemed like a win-win-win: customers not irritated, large vendor gets SOME money instead of NO money, small vendor gets some money. And the big vendor wasn't likely to have to invest a lot in it legally-their lawyers could definitely beat up the smaller vendor's lawyers. Nor was there IP involved: the products had been acquired less than two years earlier from yet another vendor, and the technology was specific to that product line. Of course, as others have noted, escrow doesn't mean anyone alive can use it to build/support an actual product. How many of us have encountered products as a vendor whose source was incomplete or didn't match what was shipping? </me raises both hands-seen it with two different acquisitions> -- ...phsiii ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
