Our recent experience with a North American customer was a mixed bag. They felt 
the misunderstanding was due to a lack of clarity on our part, but they did 
negotiate reasonably fairly -- going forward. I don't think back license fees 
were ever on the table.

Charles


-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Ed Jaffe
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 11:18 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Potential stupid question - MSUs

On 10/18/2017 10:42 AM, Charles Mills wrote:
> And yes, with the complexity of modern 'plexes and licenses, we have at my 
> current employer had customer, ahem, misunderstandings.

And those "misunderstandings" have a mixed-bag of outcomes. Some customers 
understand the concept of fair play, but in many cases the biggest lawyers win.

If, as Skip's company did (BTW, Skip is DEAD WRONG on this issue), you 
"accidentally" use unlicensed IBM software, you will pay -- no question about 
it because IBM's lawyers are as big or bigger than yours are *AND* they own the 
operating system on which your business depends. But, when the customer's 
lawyer is bigger than the ISV's lawyer, some have a tendency to say, "Hey, Man. 
It was an accident and it won't happen again. It's really your fault that your 
software doesn't enforce the contract T&Cs properly. BTW, could you now spend 
money on a project to build protections into your software to help us police 
this?"

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