Slashdot Mirror
Sunset Clauses in Software
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."
A company can only be expected to support a prior version for so long. We develop vertical market apps, and support a single major revision back.
But what I'd also like to see is older versions being made free (as in beer) after a specfied time. DOS 6.0 and Win 3.11, old Amiga games, whatever. Since there's no real potential for those to ever make a profit again, why not help the handful of people who may still be able to make some use of them?
This forced obsolescence is evil. If you collect old arcade machines you come across a similar problem - the suicide battery. Certain Japanese manufacturers had a small amount of battery powered RAM that held the decryption tables to decode the game ROMs - when the battery goes your cabinet is useless!
Why? Why? Why? If I buy something I expect it to work and I certainly don't expect the manufacturer to put a time bomb in it! Same goes for software. The problem boils down to the fact that you don't own the software - you just get a licence to use it under whatever restrictive clauses the vendor can dream up. There's certainly something to be said for genuinely free software - once you've got it it is your's to do with as you please.
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
Software companies from just about day one, have been doing this.
Call it what you want, a "sunset clause", a "bomb", etc. Basically the software expires and you must pay up for another.
The main cause of this isn't closed source software, but lack of competition.
It's the lack of competition that allows the companies to do this. Obviously if there was another software service you could buy from, you would, wouldn't you?
Even today there are a lot of small industries that buy software with these "expiration dates" in them because they have no where else to go, and can not afford to pay someone to write their own code.
To all you up and coming developers.... find these markets and make software for them. It won't make you rich, but it's a start....
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
I recently upgraded to Windows XP, hoping to get a stability boost from the NT engine in XP. I often work from home, and the multitasking required by my work had Win98 bluescreen as often as once an hour. I dreaded the upgrade because of what I knew was going to happen: I am now in the process of reloading my favorite applications one by one to see which ones are going to work and which ones are going to require upgrade in order to run under WinXP.
I couldn't even start the intall program for Easy CD Creator 4 before Windows XP itself told me that my version was out of date and I'd need to upgrade. Even the shrink-wrapped copies of ECDC at BestBuy touted a download you could get to make it XP-compliant (ie, it doesn't even work out of the box).
Music Match Jukebox 4 loads, but hangs my system the minute I try to rip am MP3. I can download the latest version, but in order for it to rip at 160K I have to pay for an upgrade.
I don't even feel the need to get the latest versions of these programs; they're jam-packed with extraneous features I won't use. I need to upgrade for the sole reason that I upgraded my OS.
All other apps combined, I'm running about 50/50 - half of my stable of frequently-used programs run under XP; half don't.
Granted, I could create a system partition for my old copy of Win98SE, load the program there, and keep going. I could cobble together a script of command-line utilities to do some of the same things under Linux (or maybe find a decent screen-driven app, but most are lacking in completeness and/or integration). Or I can knuckle under and ante up to maintain status quo.
*Sigh.* If I ever needed a kick in the pants to migrate more of my day-to-day functionality to my Linux partition, it arrived on my doorstep yesterday.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Think of a "group of people" brought together for one purpose. If that purpose is business, then making a profit is what they are all about. In the United States business schools probably teach as much ethics as they do in the computer science program I graduated from ( A 1 Semester hour course, as compared to 3 for normal classes ). Businesses do not exist to promote good ethics. They exist to make money.
This is so sad. "Hey, so we do bad things, we have no choice, we're a business!"
You do have a choice. Employees have a choice. Shareholders have a choice. Company managers have a choice.
I am Managing Director (that's CEO to you) of an IT company. A lot of my clients are reasonably ignorant about IT. It would be fairly easy for me to lie to them and sell them products and services that they don't really need, or deliberately lock them into solutions that it will be difficult for them to get out of again. It would probably make my company more profitable, and I know of companies that do it. But you know what? I don't do it. Why? Because it's wrong. When I deal with my clients, I am dealing with people. I don't think to myself "Hey, I can fuck these ignorant guys over and make lots of money." To me, and I would hope to most people, my personal values are more important than getting rich.
I imagine that Bill Gates rocks himself to sleep at night thinking "I've got all those suckers locked in and now I can raise prices and they can do nothing about it! What a bunch of losers! I'm the king of the world!" I know people like Bill Gates are highly respected in America, but they aren't so much in my corner of the world - they're seen as greedy, selfish ego-maniacs.