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Sunset Clauses in Software

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the blood-from-turnips dept.

DaveAtFraud writes: "Ed Foster over at InfoWorld has an interesting column on "sunset" clauses in commercial software. I don't have a problem with people who write, say, anti-virus software charging for a "subscription" to their virus signature update service. I am paying for something of value to me and it costs them something to maintain this data. I do have a problem with the same people extracting a little extra "squeeze" every couple of years and forcing me to learn yet another user interface just because they have decided that the old one looks little dated. Somehow, I don't buy (no pun intended) that their engine for scanning a byte stream has changed again."

2 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Our discontinued software was free (as in beer) by kriegsman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I led a small, innovative Internet software company for six years -- long enough for several of our older products to be superceded by newer, different, or competing ones, and to ultimately be retired.

    In most cases, when we finally discontinued all support for a product, especially a potentially mission-critical server product, we made a fully-functional perpetually-licensed version of the software available for free to anyone who wanted it, and who acknowledged that there was no warranty or support.

    Our logic was simple: once there was no more money for us to make with a product, if people found it useful (in its completely unsupported state), then at least we were doing something good for our customer community, and hopefully generating a little goodwill.

    I think for some kinds of software, making "retired" products available (unsupported) for free has the potential to be good for everyone involved.

    -Mark Kriegsman

  2. Norton Antivirus - real case scenario by Vspirit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    my mother has an IBM laptop with norton antivirus preinstalled. Thats good. You've paid for the software once. That was one of the motivators for her to buy the laptop. All she now need to do is to upgrade her access to the virus definition updates. Thats good. Now just recently her last subscription ran out and she wanted to renew this. She couldn't. There were nolonger an option to update order a new subscription to that version of Norton Antivirus. She have to upgrade the whole software package though all she need is the antivirus definition subscription to be updated. Something they did not say wasn't possible in the marketing. Now she can't and is running without antivirus.

    She has lost her trust in the Antivirus company who's most important issue is trust in their service.

    Similar cases are seen with small business clients of mine who were promised the same from the marketing of Norton.

    They have been left out in the open as well.

    Fact is that eg. the marketing of Norton antivirus have not lived up to its promises = false marketing in my book, and in law in Europe/Denmark it means a crime.

    So I'm now wondering if we will see class action suits in America sooner or later knowing this is going on.

    And just to finish it off.. Where are the companies strategy? it definately do not seem to be in quality when quality is defined by:

    what is delivered / what is expected = 1
    if the result is not 1, quality is questionable.