[CLUE-Talk] What's with Microsoft's upgrade ultimatum?

[David Anselmi]

I'm sorry, did you say I'm a PHB with a pea brain?  Or did you mean I have a PHB
and he has a pea brain?  Either way it's very funny <LOL> :-)

My Oracle example is perhaps inaccurate.  We use it at work.  I've been told that
it's been a year so it's time to renew our licenses.  Maybe they meant it's time
to renew our support contracts (heaven knows we couldn't run the stuff without
support, no matter how much we pay our DBA).  I'm sure others have commented on
the folly of running your business on apps that don't run without support.  But
if you *need* support to use an app, and the price changes every year for the
support you buy, you still have no control over your expenses.  Or at least less
control than you get over free software.

Here's the difference between software and a book.  A book has a copyright.  I
can't reproduce it to sell or give away although some copying is legal.  I can
give loan it, sell it, or give it away.  Software has a license.  They all pretty
much say 'if you use the software you've agreed to the license'.  Here's a
paragraph from a Rational license (it happens to be handy):

"Licensee may not assign or otherwise transfer this license except upon notice,
either (a) in connection with a sale of all or substantially all Licensee’s
business assets, or (b) pursuant to a U. S. Government program awarded to
Licensee if the Product is assigned to the U.S. Government as residual property
at the end of a contract, but not under an indefinite delivery, indefinite
quantity ("IDIQ") contract or similar procurement vehicle."

In otherwords, I can't loan, sell, or give away this software.  (The physical CD
is irrelevant since the software doesn't work without the license key.)

This license does happen to say that it is perpetual, but it could just as easily
say that it's only good for a year.

Here's some more:

"4.0 TERM AND TERMINATION.  This license shall be valid from the date purchased
by Licensee and is perpetual unless terminated by mutual consent, by Licensee’s
election, or by Rational upon thirty (30) days written notice of Licensee’s
unremedied material breach of this Agreement.  In the event of any termination of
this Agreement, Licensee will immediately return to Rational all copies of the
Product and other Rational provided materials and certify to Rational that any
and all copies of the Product have been erased from computer memory."

Once I decide to terminate this agreement, all materials go back to Rational.  I
*DO NOT* own any of this.  I 'bought' an agreement, nothing more.

Now whether these 5 pages of jargon are legally binding or just brainwashing,
I'll never know, unless I go to court (well, maybe someone else has been to
court).

Don't get me wrong.  I am 100% behind OSS, because commercial stuff has terms
like the above.  My point was that if everyone knew what a raw deal they were
getting, perhaps they'd force a change.  Probably not though, the PHBs make money
anyway so why rock the boat.

I agree with your assessment of 'support' for commercial software.  I talked to a
Sybase contractor this week and he had pretty much the same story.

Dave

Jeffery Cann wrote:

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> On Tuesday 15 May 2001 22:04, David Anselmi wrote:
> > Why shouldn't MS license their software on an annual basis?
> > Other big packages (Oracle?) are done that way.
>
> Oracle gets you to upgrade because they quickly stop supporting previous
> versions.  If you no longer want support, but still want to use your Oracle
> database, you do not have to pay Oracle.
>
> This is not a forced upgrade per se, but many PHBs freak out if there is no
> support available from the vendor.  I mean, how could all of our DBAs keep
> their jobs if they weren't installing and testing Oracle upgrades every few
> months?
>
> The irony is that the 'support' by Oracle (and most vendors, IMHO) is
> terrible.  It is support in a sense if "we feel your pain, but cannot
> alleviate it".  Not in the sense of "you have a problem that we created, and
> we are going to fix your problem".
>
> I have worked with Oracle, building applications for over 5 years.  I have
> found several bugs in their software and not once have they fixed a bug that
> I have found.  Most of the time you call "support", it goes like this:
>
> 1.  You have a problem.
> 2.  Support guy sees that its a problem, but won't admit it really is.  He
> asks for test case, because he can't easily reproduce it.
> 3.  You send test case.  It may take a day to code a simple test case,
> because you cannot send them your entire application, so you have to boil it
> down to the simplest example.
> 4.  Support guy says: we'll have our senior people look at it.
> 5.  You (with a deadline) figure out a way to work around the bug.  You do
> this because even if Oracle does admit it is a bug (rare), they won't fix it.
>  If they do fix it, it will not be available to you for months, maybe years.
> Mind you, all of this running around costs your company a lot of time (in
> some cases _weeks_ of development time) and therefore costs money.
> 6.  In the interim, no info from from Oracle support.
> 7.  You call them back and tell them the workaround in hopes that when some
> other poor sap runs across the bug, that the Oracle support guy can tell him
> about the workaround and save his company time and money.
>
> >They (and most commercial
> > software companies) have been selling licenses (right to use the
> > software under their terms) for a long time.  Buying a CD with software
> > on it is different than buying a book, or even a music CD.  Maybe now
> > people will start to realize that.
>
> How is software different than a book or CD?  You state that they are
> different but give no reason(s).  I would be interested if you would provide
> your thoughts.
>
> IMHO, the only reason people think it is different is because that is why the
> software companies have been pounding into your PHB tiny pea brain.  If I buy
> something, I _own_ it.  It is that simple.  I can do with it as I wish.  Most
> software companies (like CDs or books) have copy restrictions.  This
> restriction does not make a software program fundamentally different than
> some other product.  It just means that software companies do not want people
> getting their product for free, which is fine with me.
>
> Given all of the other strings attached to fee-based software, I prefer to
> use software that falls under the GNU license.   If anything, at least there
> is real support for free software.  Hell, I can fix my own bugs (and I have),
> which is faster and cheaper than coding a workaround and I help the free
> software community.  Not a bad deal.
>
> Later,
> Jeff
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