Please allow me to add that I have been thinking about this problem space for 25 years. I did not wake up one morning and say "what could I do today to annoy mainframe customers?" I feel the customer pain. I have also felt the pain of "how am I going to make payroll this week?"
I have been responsible for two significant mainframe products. Both came to market without "keys." In both cases we added keys -- not because we had nothing else to do -- but in response to specific market problems. In the case of the current product, we had a customer -- a large shop, a household name, everyone on this list would recognize the name in a heartbeat -- license half a dozen LPARs and then run it on twenty -- and get semi-belligerent when asked to come into compliance: "we thought we could run it on all our LPARs." In their defense, the original mistake was probably innocent: there were two layers of outsourcers and a lot of management turnover. But frankly, it would have been easier for *everyone* if the product had refused to run on the unlicensed LPARs from the get-go. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charles Mills Sent: Monday, April 24, 2017 6:42 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Vendor Licensing Frustrations Oh gee, let me try to respond to the most significant points here. > Charles Mills argues in defense of software product keys for mainframe software. No, I argue in defense of vendors getting paid (so they can pay their employees, their rent, their SHARE sponsorships, their IBM bills, ...). Keys are just a means to that end. I was ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
