Ditto with a foreign distributor. Blatant, intentional rip-off (at my former company). They took us for a little, and the same distributor took another US vendor whose name you would recognize in a heartbeat for a whole lot -- more than 7 digits, apparently, for a company that was only doing in the mid 7 digits total.
We also (at my former company) had a US mainframe customer who apparently ripped us off intentionally. And yes, with the complexity of modern 'plexes and licenses, we have at my current employer had customer, ahem, misunderstandings. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Jaffe Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 10:12 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Potential stupid question - MSUs On 10/18/2017 9:46 AM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: > I've been in this business for decades and have never once observed a > deliberate conspiracy to cheat a vendor. Frequent ads about 'piracy' conjure > up boardrooms full of Captain Hooks comparing the size of their parrots while > they chart cheating schemes. It doesn't happen. It HAS happened! I am aware of one case in particular in which a foreign distributor sold PSI software to numerous "off book" customers he never told us about. It wasn't until we received a technical support query that the scheme was finally uncovered! What a lose-lose mess that turned out to be. Those customers had paid in good faith and yet we never received a dime. > OTOH I've become aware of a few unauthorized or inadvertent violations. One > involved a cowboy operator who copied an ISV product to an environment for > which it was not licensed. He thought he had found a better way to do his > job. Nasty fallout. Another case concerned PSF, where the contract specified > a certain volume of AFP print--not CPU MSUs. No one noticed that the limit > had been exceeded until a routine IBM audit revealed the excession. The piper > was paid. It's not unusual for users/operators/admins to be unaware of specific T&Cs specified in software contracts. In the old days, customers would license software everywhere so compliance was trivial. (Just pay the bill.) But, in today's price-conscious, cost-cutting world, it's not unusual for customers to license software to a bare-minimum, limited subset of execution environments. As a result, accidental violations of software contracts are on the rise. This had led to direct customer requirements to have software *block* users/operators/admins from accidentally violating T&Cs agreed to by the corporation. FWIW, the support we provided to enforce this has been well received... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
