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Hardware Manufacturers Gouging Customers
rahlquist writes "An article over at infoworld discusses that buying that used router on ebay may not be a good deal if Cisco can find its way to screwing you. What's next, buy a used Ford and pay Ford to transfer the license for the onboard computer's OS or face piracy charges if you continue to drive?"
The bad news is that they are violating the gpl. :( I even submitted a /. article that is still pending after 2 days trying to deal with this. I need to recompile the kernel on one of the units I bought from them, but they won't release the kernel sources to me. *sigh*
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
At the rate that hardware becomes outdated, what benifit do they think they would have screwing their customers out of trying to recoup some of their costs?
Not to mention that every time I sell old hardware, it is for the express purpose of purchasing new hardware. Everyone wins.
So a NetApp storage system is two separate pieces, the hardware and the software. If I decide to sell my old NetApp, does this mean I can sell the hardware to someone, and the software to someone else? That doesn't sound like something that NetApp would like.
Vote for global prefs bug
What's next, buy a used Ford and pay Ford to transfer the license for the onboard computer's OS or face piracy charges if you continue to drive? don't give them any ideas
Surely this is only a storm in a tea cup.
For large companies who require the support contracts, they will not usually buy equipment on eBay, but through their corporate supplier.
For smaller companies who would buy hardware second hand, they are the kind who can make do without supports contracts, and happily live in a legal "grey area".
Although it is morally stingy on the company's part, I don't think it will do too much to normal people, who will just use it "illegally".
Well, good thing all my used gear was lifted from busted dot-coms. ;P
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I buy used hardware at auction all the time. It's common practice that all you're buying is a piece of hardware, and that the drive in the box is going to be wiped. To bemoan that when somebody buys old hardware on eBay and they don't get a license for the software in it is ridiculous. I thought this was going to be an article about hardware price gouging, not another license transfer whine.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Someone owns a whole bunch of Cisco routers or other miscellaneous equipment. Once the equipment is no longer needed, they retain the license to the software while selling the hardware to someone else. Cisco rep complains, new hardware owner says "talk to the software licensee". When purchasing maintenance agreements and such, the hardware owner pays off the software licensee the cost of the maintenance agreement plus a small surcharge, and the software licensee pays Cisco the amount on Cisco's price list for the maintenance agreement.
The terms of the license agreement are fulfilled - it's just that the on-site location is changed.
All of these people have bought stuff on E-Bay and are surprised when companies turn round and so no. I know it hard but if they went through a reseller then it would be all supported etc.
The companies have no idea what state the hardware is in so if say a controller has gone they won't to make sure they are covered.
On the software side however it is slightly different. I can understand them wanting you to pay some fee but prehaps not full price as a matter of good will. Then again as the old saying goes
"you get what you pay for"
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I wonder if this "you bought the license not the software" attitude is coming out of Cisco's Software, Hardware, or legal department? Seems kind of silly when the router doesn't have a EULA like most software, oh I mean licenses, that you buy.
I'd say they already have. If your router from ebay didn't already come with its proprietary cables you have to buy them from Cisco. Or try to find them on ebay as well.
Thanks to Cisco not using any standard cables of any kind (Well except for the RJ-45 and serial ports, heh) on the things you have to buy theirs for tall cash which could easily be more than what you paid for the router.
"$15,000 is still a good deal... If the ownership of a system changes, our contract says the software has to be relicensed."
If I give up my ownership, do I get my $15K back? Something tells me no.
When companies get greedy like this, it's all I can do to keep my calm. I'm not sure I agree that all information wants to be free, but used sofware licenses that are bound to hardware that is changing hands sure do.
The CB App. What's your 20?
hate to say it, but you gotta know what you're buying. both used and new. maybe it will awaken some eyes to open source/open standards, what have you, but if you buy something you need to know if you can resell it (as opposed to a leasing, or trading in with the manufacturer), if that is your plan.
as a side note, my father worked for pitney bowes (they sell shipping,mailing, and postage systems) for many years. they did the same with their shipping systems and software. of course, most old PB systems got traded in for newer systems, there were few in the 2nd hand market. so it's not just in the IT world.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Hate to play devil's advocate but ohh well..
This makes perfect sense for the hardware companies, when you buy a high end router, you aren't paying just for the box, the metal, and the wires, but also for the IOS, tha code might not have a pretty front end, or a nice little start button, but it is software that someone made and without it the box is useless. Software companies do this all the time, makes perfect business sense for hardware companies to do the same.
Useless sig.
One thing they don't discuss in the article, but which I think would be legal, would be to permanently lease your equipment rather than sell it on eBay.
E.g. Used router for sale - $ 400
versus Used router for lease - $ 400 first month, $0 each additional month.
If you really need service contracts negotiated through me, then I do it for you at a reasonable hourly rate for my inconvenience.
I bought an 831 new (so I have the license for it) back in June. After reading about the recent vulnerablility I contacted Cisco to get an updated IOS version. I thought it would be a simple process, considering some of the comments I read here. I recieved an email back from them telling me if I wanted it fixed, I would have to purchase a SmartNet contract. That was July 18, and I am still running a vulnerable version using the ACL workaround.
If people can't be bothered to READ a contract before signing it I can't be bothered to care.
I do read that sort of thing and that is why I will only buy from scum like Cisco if I have no other choice. And I usually do.
You can buy sync serial cards on the open market you know.
As for non-transferability, BS. They can probably refuse to sell a service contract on the used equip, perhaps even deny you updates. But "going after" you for possessing/using a piece of used equip would never stand in court. Doctrine of first sale allows copyrighted works to be sold by their rightful owner and EULAs are only valid in Virgina. So unless you have an actual contract with a company that specifically says you can't bring in a used box you are clear, and any such clause probably wouldn't stand in court if you were willing to spend the money to fight it. (i.e. one unit from eBay isn't worth a fight, 1,000 from an acquisition probably is.)
Democrat delenda est
Anything you sell on ebay will have a relicensing fee... including that 30 gb hard drive you bought last week. Technically speaking, it's got software on it as well, and any use of it past it's first owner who signed for it could be written in as software piracy.
If you sell your used hardware to someone, then from the corporate viewpoint, YOU are depriving them of their right to sell NEW hardware to that person, hence you are infringing on the rights of a corporation !?! Lordie this country is hosed in the head....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
When you purcahse the car it is taxed and then when you resell it to another person it is taxed again.
Double taxation.
You are taxed on your paycheck and then when you invest your money and it generates income it is taxed again.
double taxation.
unless you own your own corporation the working class tax serfs are always there to exploit.
How about Nortel? Their systems all require software, and the licenses are entirely, 100% NON-TRANSFERABLE.
They've actually got a page on their website warning people that they should ONLY buy new equipment from authorized resellers, lest they be guilty of license violations. Ie, call us when you've got a question about that used Nortel phone switch, and not only will we not help you, we'll fucking SUE you too.
How about camera gear? Nikon warrantees aren't transferrable. Even better, almost all camera companies enforce different pricing across different regions by not honoring warranties in any country/region except where the camera was bought...which is why that great deal on a grey-market Nikon D100 on ebay might not be such a hot idea- show up at a Canon USA service center with it, and you'll be politely told to go screw yourself, because they won't service it(or if they do, it won't be under warranty, if it's brand new.) Simply because you bought it outside the US(or someone else did, and you bought it from them.)
Please help metamoderate.
tia
The auto industry already does make you pay money to transfer a warranty over if you sell a car. Or, at least, many manufacturers do. Chrysler charges about $150. Other makers may vary.
I Can definitely see why a company would want to charge something to cover paperwork, handling, and maybe even require a recertification or inspection of the device as they now have to support it as if it were new. Charging a reasonable fee for that doesn't strike me as too bad of an idea. You got a bargain on the hardware, good for you. The manufacturer has no idea what they're getting into, because it is not new from them or someone they've allowed to sell it, so it's only smart for them to ensure that what you have is supportable before they agree to support it.
I do think it's somewhat stupid to charge a huge amount, but on the other hand, what is "reasonable" when you're dealing with equipment that costs tens of thousands of dollars or more? I guess the market decides that. If people think it's way too much they won't pay it. If it breaks, that was the gamble you took when you opted for that bargain.
We bought an EMC SAN from a bankruptcy auction of a failed telecom.
We payed $5k for the unit (bid price), which came to probaly about twice that once all was said and done.
EMC wanted some obsene amount of money to license us the software to boot the puppy up, so it sat in from of our datacenter for a few months. Then a sister division bought started looking into an IBM Shark for their datacenter that we would be using part of. Rumor is IBM gave us a $200k discount on the shark for the trade in of our EMC unit.
So we made off with $190k from the deal! (kind of) Not a bad profit after our horror of EMC's license cost!
To top it off, the EMC has been sitting in front of our datacenter for an addition 6 months or so. I fegure they don't even want the unit. They just didn't want us using it.
That's my interesting experience with this.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
during the recent Big bug, I went around to all my routers, all of them used. I requested the top IOS with the best feature set for what we use each router, for each and every router, and know what? Cisco gave me .bin files for all of them. Since these came directly from Cisco, aren't these now arguably licensed?
But since you are required to pay for a support contract to get these updates, it is clear that the firmware is a separate product, even though it is delivered with the device, and the device will not operate without it. Note that many companies do not operate this way - these days you can download drivers for free for any PC you might purchase, via the internet. Even before the WWW became interesting for commercial purposes, you could generally call up their tech support, send them some money or make a credit card payment, and get the drivers shipped to you for a few bucks to cover a floppy (At the time, a not-inconsiderable amount of money when repeated frequently) and postage.
Therefore, since you must pay for updates to the software, a given update becomes almost an item of physical property. You have paid for it, and the right to use it. Hence, when transferring the device to the next owner, they should take ownership of that instance of that version of the code. It should not be considered simply "licensed" to them. After all, you paid for it, not just in some vague way by purchasing the device, but through the purchase of a support contract which is generally the only way to legally get access to these firmware images. Therefore, you should be able to transfer it, or your license to it, or whatever language you would like to use for the same thing here.
I should think it would be quite sufficient for the new owner to purchase a support contract and pick up. The answer to this "problem" is not relicensing fees, it's end-of-life. At EOL for a given product, current owners of the product should be able to purchase support for some given number of years, or commit to purchasing it, at a given price, and you will know how long you have to support the product. I think it's best to also commit to supporting the device at the current rate. As the device gets older, it will become less expensive to support, because more of the issues will be "known", and after end of life, you can refuse to add new features to the device without someone specifically paying you consulting fees for development.
This way, there is a finite lifetime to a product, you maintain your support costs, and let's face it; If someone has a support contract you will provide installation support to them as many times as they would like to move and reinstall it; This is really the only possible way to excuse charging anyone ANYTHING more than the recurring fees of the support contract when they purchase and employ a used device. If a company purchased an entire other company's assets, then necessarily their firmware licenses would come with it. Why, then, is it reasonable to charge a relicensing fee when someone purchases used hardware? It is not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some net app boxes are nothing but Dell servers in disgise :) i have converted many of them to realy nice dual cpu 64bit pci file servers running linux with hardware raid
We substituted the coffee Slashdot normally drinks with "Sandoz Crystals", Lets see if they notice the difference
Read the post numb nuts. He buys Cisco in order to EIGRP. If he used OSPF he would use something else.
At least in the case of cisco routers, why bother?
and with that microtek crap too!
just go grab yourself a copy of Zebra, it's a fully
GPL'd set of routing protocols for Linux/Unix/etc.
What, you need special ports, etc? head on over to any number of suppliers, like zynx for example (sorry it was the first one I could think of off the top of my head).
I mean, cripes, a company I knew many years ago built the worlds first wireless router using Zebra and disk on chip technology running picoBSD.
it can be done folks, and without all the cost or hassle of cisco. The only good network equipment out there (IMHO) is Foundry anyhow...
I remember the s/36 and as/400 market place, in that the OS was licensed, and didn't transfer with the hardware. You always had to license the SW from IBM for the going list price.
With software, that is licensed, the rules are what ever the license agreement is.
Microsoft is doing the same thing, in that the software isn't a product seperate from the HW as well any more.
"Tague and others think the manufacturers' restrictions are just not right. "It's a flat out scam," he says. "Just because it's typical, just because the other guys are doing it too, doesn't mean it's OK."
How is it, in a nation where it is the will of the people that is to be represented and reflected in our laws and statues, our laws and statues reflect not the will of the people, but the will of an elite minority?
What more evidence do we need than this that ours is not a government by the people, for the people, but instead a government by those who have power, for those who already have it?
These businesses and corporations exist, and may operate only as we permit them to; they are by our permission.
We must revoke their permission. We must revoke their permission to buy laws which ensure their profit margins. We must revoke their permission to buy laws which mandate revenue where there ought not to be any.
What was it that the Justice Department lawyers told us, and the technology lobyist told us in their interviews; that it is naive, uninformed, and probably just childish of us to suggest that our government is in the pockets of corporations, and that corporations can "buy laws"?
What I say to them is that it is they who are naive. The corporate interests of today do not need to buy a single new law to oppress us, to wrong us, and to devestate us.
They do not, because our laws, our resources, our nation, were bought and sold to corporate interests long before any one of us were even born.
We are born into chains and we die under their weight.
If you struggle, it only drives those in power to bind us all the tighter. And they grin in delight. And they swim in their gold. And they build the flames higher.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
It's the seller fault for not telling the buyer about this. The seller originally agreed to the license, and should have pointed out the extra charge on eBay before bidders began bidding. A real estate lender has to do this before you apply for a loan. It's called a Good Faith Estimate, and it spells out the charges other than the monthly mortgage.
Go after the seller, not Cisco.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I was looking for a used SOHO series router on eBay, but I think I'm better off building a small Linux router and using something like Freesco instead.
I know I'm small potatoes in context to the article, but I wonder how many other large organizations, after having a experience simimlar to Mr. Tague's, will take a long hard look at a Linux based solution?
Their practices appear to violate the doctrine of first sale, which the Supreme Court has been found to heavily favor in the past. The parts of the agreement that govern the non-transferablility of the license could be invalidated if this were ever challenged in court. I think it would only take one lawsuit from a large corporation like a bank to take care of these prohibitive licensing terms. In the past, portions of contracts and complete contracts have even been invalidated because of terms that were not binding due to laws forbidding them. This could just be one of many of those.
IANAL (yet) but unless the guy selling the equipment on EBay signed a contract agreeing not to resell the equipment or software, First Sale applies here (First Sale = It's ok to sell the copyrighted thing you legally acquired). The one caveat is if the seller lives in a state where UCITA has been enacted, in which case he is bound by the shrinkwrap license agreement inlcuded with the software. So chances are the buyer got a nice router on the cheap that he can legally use as is which is what you would expect when buying something from EBay.
Unfortunately, the poor buyer is still screwed for the maintenance contract because Cisco can refuse to do business with him for just about any reason under the sun. This is one of the big caveats when you buy directly from corporations and not through retail outlets. You may get a cheaper price up front but those tricky Corps will make you sign all sorts of invasive/restrictive contracts to lock you in to their wares.
My advice is to buy all of the used hardware/software you want from EBay, just don't go expecting Uber Corps to help you out afterwards.
X
working for a large optical company over the past few years I've always wondered why no-one brought this up before.
Its a total scam used to fix prices in the market, by essentially preventing a second-hand market. In the optical business they called it a 'right-to-use' license.
To use an anology, it would be like GM or Ford preventing the use of a second-hand vehicle, unless the buyer bought a license...totally wrong in my opinion.
The argument that this is common in the software business is a bit of a fallacy. Routers are appliances...the software isn't interchangeable with other hardware. Its bit like the engine in your GM or Ford car.
But (Michael Tague's) delight turned to anger when he contacted NetApp to purchase a maintenance agreement for the used system. "They weren't interested in negotiating the maintenance agreement until we paid $15,000 to relicense the operating system that came with the unit"
This is just another example of Sharecropping. It's Cisco's right to do whatever they want with their [soft|hard]ware platform, as it is for Microsoft and other commercial [hard|soft]ware companies. Having said that, I think it's reasonable for people like Mr. Tague to be angry at Cisco for their greed.
And of course I'm preaching to the choir when I say the solution to problems like these is to invest in Open Source soultions.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
My company purchased 5 used Sun E4500s, fully loaded with 12 CPUS, 12 GB RAM, and Gigabit ethernet, for 2k USD each. Sun made us pay a one-time fee of 60k USD for the OS licenses (after which those OS licenses were in our existing maintenance).
Then, we paid Sun 10k USD to 'certify' that the machines were all Sun equipment, no 3rd party components. Their tech tore each one down to check the parts for this.
With the OS and cetification process we still bought 5 servers for the price of one. What's to complain about? I suppose we could just get the hardware certified and run Linux on them if we didn't want to pay for Solaris licenses, but it's still a bargain to me.
Sounds like a completely legal loosing business model. It's legal but pissing off potential customers with price gouging can be terminal to your company.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
That's what it is.
... or not?
Sad.
Once again, common sense down the drain, and greed standing up.
You sold something, something you sold can't be re-sold by yourself. By law it appears to be possible, so it seems. But what the heck, I guess it's the free market that should decide, the free market will make sure everything will be allright the way it should be. Competition will make sure Cisco stops with this bull-shit.
Right.
I suggest open source network appliance software to once again counter a major flaw in our current capitalistic system.
Capitalism is cewl, but we let it go too far. It's currently too easy to have monopolists and other vendors charge us money for nothing. I.e. screw us up.
I would assume that the only way Cisco can tell if something is 'used' is if:
A. You tell them.
B. The previous owner had a contract with them or registered the product with them in some case.
I just purchased a used 7204VXR, but I'm having some trouble finding a 'software relicensing fee' on cisco's pricing tool (I can find one for a Catalyst 2900, but not for a 7200 series IOS license). Anyone have the part number for one, or suggestions on the best way to get a Smartnet contract with Cisco (I originally thought that I'd have to bite the bullet and buy a 'new' license, instead of just relicense it.. but cheaper is better).. Also, anyone know of any large(ish) outfits that do inspections of ciscos for cheap (for smartnet contracts?)
I purchased a 1601 off ebay, two days before the IOS vulnerability. I called them that day, told the rep I'd purchased the router from ebay and had no service contract. He asked me what version of IOS I needed, and I had a new patch that day. He even helped me install it, and got me a different version when that one didn't work. He never once tried to shake me down.
For those of you who haven't recognized it already, this is a new form of troll that has just made its way onto Slashdot recently. It consists of posting the text of an article, then at some point interjecting a random phrase or entire paragraph that contains the "troll" portion of the message. In this case, it's the following (bolded for emphasis):
"If nothing else, customers who express their distaste for transfer restructions could force the hardware manufacturers to fuck micheal sims with traffic cone.."
As you can see, the troll doesn't have a great mastery of English. The problem with these trolls is that they can just as easily come from registered accounts, whom will collect karma in this manner and use it to abuse the comments even further. If you see a comment with the full text of an article, either mod it down or read it letter for letter before modding it up. Do us all a favour.
I can't believe the majority of /. didn't know this. This has been going on for quite some time, and is standard in the router/switch arena. I don't see any problem with it. It's their software, and their license. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Refusing to honor a warranty is not the same as declaring it illegal to sell your old Nikon camera.
LordBodak's journal.
Sun does the same thing. While some people argue that this requirement might not stand in the court, the Solaris licenses are -not- transferrable. So, technically all those dirt-cheap Sun systems sold on Ebay do not come with right to use of Solaris on them even if it came preinstalled until proven otherwise in the court (in some countries, apparently, non-transferrable software licenses are illegal)
You could kinda understand it if the company charging through the nose made generic software that could run on a number of platforms. But your average company ain't going to go buy a router on eBay just to get hold of a certain version of IOS to run on their XBox. Likewise, a Cisco router cannot be run on Linux (though SCO are probably trying to work out if any parts of their valuable IP is in IOS in case you happen to have more than one ASIC!).
The hardware is useless without the software, and vice versa. It should be treated as one product.
This simply strikes of sheer extortion. Nothing more, nothing less, and Cisco et al should be taken to task, legally if needs be, for it.
--sanx--
Windows Tweaks
Companies will not want to buy expensive things that have no value, i.e., can't be resold. They may go open-source or they may go to another vendor but I just can't see people buying big-ticket stuff with no intrinsic value in this era of pennypinching. Unless of course they are completely ignorant of trends like this, but only a PHB would.... oh yeah. Right. Never mind.
Sounds like a a very good business plan to ensure future business. Maybe the RIAA should try blocking the sale of used cd's, oh wait..
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Try it with me. Losing. not loosing.
One more time.
lo-sing. not loo-sing.
You're welcome, Mr. Idiot.
This isn't like Gamer PCs, where you _need_ a 4.77 GHz machine to keep up, or a Microsoft Office machine, where MS keeps making Office bigger and using the newer features of Windows, so you need to upgrade Windows, but you can't upgrade to Windows 2006 without upgrading to at least a 2GHz machine with 6.40GB of RAM. This is much more like the 486 Linux machine sitting in the corner acting as a DNS and DHCP server, or the Pentium 133 you're using as an X terminal.
But there are two popular reasons to sell a used router. One is that you're upgrading to a bigger router, and as you say, everyone wins including the router vendor. The other reason is that your dot-com died (or was bought by somebody who already had enough bandwidth in their offices) and you're selling the routers, the PCs, the chairs, the cubicle walls, and the t-shirts, and nobody's buying any new router except your happy E-Bay customer, and the router vendor loses a sale they might have gotten.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The OS in your car is embedded Linux, so you owe SCO $699 even if you bought the car new.
It is a pattern of magnetic domains on a hard disk, or pits on a CD-ROM.
Why is that any less physical than the rest of the hardware?
Now, some may argue that "software" is different because it can more easily be copied than the rest of the hardware.
Here is a thought experiment:
If tomorrow, someone invented a "matter duplicator" that could duplicate any item, then could CISCO have a EULA for the hardware as well?
Does this make any sense?
I think that so-called "software" should be treated no differently than any other hardware; i.e., there should be reasonable protections against making copies of it (copyrights/patents), but that one should be able to resell what one buys.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Probably not all auto makers charge for it, and local laws may vary. There are probably parts of the world where it may even be illegal to charge for a warrantry transfer. However, the point is that it isn't unheard of either.
It's all about blame and expectations.
People expect Cisco to be good. After all, it's Cisco. They've been making good stuff for years. So when something goes wrong, it's an anomaly.
On the other hand, when the new router from the new company that they've never heard of before has a problem, that's 100% failure to them.
Suppose you have 100 machines with 100 IBM hard drives and they've been working for 5 years and 2 drives crash hard today.
You wouldn't get a bad opinion of IBM hard drives from that.
Now, suppose you swap in two drives from some company you've never heard of before and BOTH those drives crash hard within 48 hours.
Would you ever buy another from that company?
Not if you're the average person.
Despite the fact that IBM and that company might have the exact same failure rate on their drives.
That's why it is so important for new companies to spend money on customer relationships. Quickly exchange hardware while charging LESS for the equipment than the established companies. Which means you have lower profits.
If hardware vendors ruin the resale value of their products. And a piece of hardware can't be resold, then on purchase it instantly depreciates to $0.00. What accounting department is going to let my put money in assets that instantly depreciate to zero? None. We might as well spend our money on labor.
There's a small effort underway by a couple of their upper-level tech staff to have an official low cost or free "home license" program, but it hasn't made much headway yet. Right now it's pretty much "here's a working license code, don't share it, don't use it for production/profit purposes, and don't call us for support".
The guy in the article should be able to *use* his filers just fine with the old license codes; he'll only have to pay NetApp if he wants ONTAP (the filer OS) upgrades or hardware support (replacement drives or other parts).
I host the Filers-At-Home mailing list.
So they kick your door down and snatch the flash card out of the router? What kind of "license" do I get with Phoenix/Award/AMI when I buy a computer? How about the firmware in my CD/RW? My HD?
You aren't required to have a warranty on a car and you aren't required to have maintenance on a switch from Ebay either. It's obviously helpful when something breaks, though.
I'm surprised that since the object for Cisco is to prevent the resale of their routers, and this "relicensing" affront to the first sale doctrine is just a smokescreen, that they haven't pulled a Microsoft, joined eBay's "Verified Rights Owner" program and started killing any auction that contained the word "Cisco."
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
What is the cost to Cisco of being featured in a negative way on Slashdot? Companies should think about the cost of publicity before they choose to abuse their customers.
Cisco's cost could be very large. Not only is there support in this Slashdot story for "Resist Cisco", there is the cost to Cisco of some of the readers learning for the first time that there are other alternatives.
I've been abused by Cisco, too. My reaction is to try to avoid any dealings with them. Abusiveness is like them shouting to me, "We're doing poorly, and we have no other way to make money."
I've watched abusive companies over the years, and discovered that abusiveness is a good predictor that a company believes it is on the way down. Novell is an example. Novell was rough on its customers when it had 85% of the network market. A few years later it was a far smaller company. The abusiveness helps make you aware of the forecast of insiders about the prospects of a company.
If you read the OS license on a Sun you'll see that the OS non-transferable. As far as you're concerned the OS didn't cost anything. It came with the box. You can sell the box. You can't sell the software. As I recall Sun used to charge $1000 for an OS licence. At least now you could run Linux as an alternative.
Doesn't Microsoft's license say the same thing with OEM versions of Windows? Sell the PC. The OS is non-transferable.
How about Macs and Mac OS?
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Yes, they do it. They will try any way they can think of to get more money out of you.
Which is one of the reasons that Linux is spreading so fast on servers and embeded devices.
Linux doesn't have that kind of crap associated with it.
Go penguins.
They have to play by US law. Now they could, of course, just stop selling stuff here and there'd be little anyone could do about it. However a US court can exert control over them so long as they have a US arm of operations. This is how the EU can exert control over Microsoft, despite it being a US company. They do bussiness in the EU and hence are subject to the laws of member nations if the wish to continue to to bussiness there.
The car companies long ago figured out by having a robust used car market you make sure you sell new cars. Heck they learned they could make money on selling parts for used cars as well!
So I buy a bunch of Cisco stuff. Since the software can't be transferred, and the hardware will end up costing the buyer as much as, or more than, new equipment, all this new Cisco stuff immediately is worth $0 on the open market. Now according to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principals) assets are valued at the lower of cost or market. So these assets are now worth $0. Instant depreciation, and I get to write off the entire cost of the hardware and software as a business expense during one year, instead of spreading the cost out over five years or so.
I Wonder what the IRS will say when somebody tries this?
How's this for a solution to these stupid license agreements. Instead of selling the hardware, I sell the use of my hardware for an unlimited time, the purchaser is free to transfer this agreement to anyone he chooses. As far as the license is concerned I still own the equipment I am just renting it out forever for a fixed one time price.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Manufacturers of systems with proprietary operating systems such as high-end routers, data storage devices, and a variety of telecommunications equipment, now generally say their software license agreements prohibit transfer of the software when the hardware is resold.
First sale doctrine.
Next.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Yeah, and with 2 comments spread over fifty articles. Your site is horseshit.
...completely.
Suppose you have 100 machines with 100 IBM hard drives and they've been working for 5 years and 2 drives crash hard today.
You wouldn't get a bad opinion of IBM hard drives from that.
Now, suppose you swap in two drives from some company you've never heard of before and BOTH those drives crash hard within 48 hours.
It would seem to me that IBM and Company X have different fail rates for this hardware. Here's why:
Out of 100 drives, running for five years, two fail.
Assume the period for this failure is two days, since that was the shortest life of any experimental sample (Brand X drives).
So, out of 100 drives, running for 913.125 periods, 2% fail.
However, out of two drives, in one period, 100% fail.
How do they have the exact same fail-rate?
Informatus Technologicus
Latvia will be part of European Union next spring. Europeans laws are decent ones, and they will apply to Latvia as soon as it joins the EU. That case is not as desperate as it sounds. Don't give up!
This is how our corporate culture works, and the only way around it is to tell the crooks to fuck off and not use their products.
Take an old clunker, two nics and go to
http://smoothwall.org/beta/
and download the latest package, smoothwall 2.0 Orient.
It's free. It works. You can find clunkers everywhere for free.
I refurb old clunkers and load smoothy on them.
I resell them and make a few $$$ for my pocket,
keep stuff out of the land fill and make some
customer very happy for saving them BIG $$$$....
buy all these products in Germany or any other state where a sale is a sale.
Oh well, what the hell...
So are they all winking at each other, and tacitly agreeing to screw the customer this way?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
The funny thing about firmware is the fact that it is, in most cases, physicaly attached to a device and when physicaly moved, the firmware physicaly goes with it... fancy that.
MSN's adsl service for example issued out arescom modems which included firmware that can't easily be updated by the end user, and the company doesn't give out firmware for MSN tagged modems. In my region it limits their usefulness pretty much to PPPoA based service, and near as I can tell while using NAT, are limited to only allowing one device behind the NAT. While freaking stupid, I can not trully argue with this as the end user bought the modem this way, it's not like they have special rights to diffrent firmware. Bought a dsl modem with crappy firmware...that's what you are doomed to have for life.
It has always been my belief that when you sell a device... the firmware goes with it. Nice company provide updates freely, but near as I'm aware are by no means obligated to. Unless it is physicaly removed, it's yours. I can not believe that our legal system would permit, for example, selling of a used telivision that requires extra money to operate.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The question is: is it clear from EULA? If not, can a hradware vendor be responsible for lying to hardware buyers?
Less is more !
Wouldn't this count as a form of illegal bundling? IANAL but....
Lets look at it this way, if I purchase a new NetAPP from either them or CDW the only option I have is to purchase the bundled deal (both the software license and the hardware) as they consider it one single entity. However, if I choose to sell it I can only transfer legal ownership of the hardware and not the software.
So, if I sell my NetAPP (hardware only) I should thus retain the license for the software and be able to purchase the hardware only from NetApp (though why anyone would do this with a newer model I don't know). However, if I request to do so they have and will respond that they are sold as one and I can not buy one without the other... Thus would they not be violating the bundling laws by forcing me to purchase one item to get the other when they can be sold separately and this is provable by their very own license?
It just seems unenforceable if someone will challenge the whole thing in court. I would think that between property laws (First Right Of Owner) and general contract law enforceability that this would be struck down pretty quick.
As a second thought, what would prevent another company from creating software (GPL anyone?) for all of this second market hardware? Would the hardware vendors be able to do anything about it?
Huh?
I think the moral of the story is "Buyer Beware", not "Help, I'm Being Raped". When you buy some used technology on eBay, make sure you're also buying the right to use that technology. Or if you don't feel obligated to honor the non-transferrability clause in a user license, make sure it's a product where the clause is effectively unenforceable -- as with all the educational-license software that students routinely resell on eBay.
I get sun workstations on ebay, the price is right and I enjoy using these boxes.
One can download solaris for free from sun, as well as patches, drivers, ect.
This may be bad news, they might decide to ditch the free download eventually. that would really.. suck.
I would not buy a cisco product. get a wan card and a linux box. your probably better off.
just my $0.02
Some sales reps explicitly warn customers that they will be punished if they are caught with equipment purchased on eBay.
Any sales rep who used this sort of tactic with me would promptly find themselves in the parking lot with the sound of a slamming door echoing in their ear.
I thought when you sell your computer or your computer dies, you can't transfer your Windows license, at least not legally...
Its a matter of percentages. In Population's example he was assumeing that OVERALL the IBM drives and the offbrand drives had the same failure rate, but due to the vagueries of fate you happened to get two that burned out very quickly.
If person Foo plays a slot machine for hours without any payback, then person Bar plays for two minutes and hits the jackpot that doesn't mean much of anything. Each person had exactly the same odds of winning.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
If you had bought 98 more, they would not have had any problems. They would have run for 5 years, just like the IBM drives.
But you wouldn't buy any more because your initial experience with them was bad. Therefore, to you, they will appear to have a 100% failure rate. Despite what their actual failure rate might be.
This is why people who do not understand things like MTBF or statistics believe that going with Cisco is the better choice, even if it costs more.
The fact is, not a lot of people still buy used technological commodity hardware. It may be cheaper, but it probably is obsolete already, and may be even less reliable than a new one.
Every time you purchase such restricted hardware, spin off a new Corporation.
Cisco Router Model X SN#12039okaj0123iasj Inc.
When you sell off the equipment, sell off the company. The software is licensed to that corporation. No need to relicense.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
is the fault of idiots... idiots who are willing to agree to such licensing terms. If customers would just grow some gonads and say "NO," then these terms would never come into existence.
We live in a market economy - the Windows license got so bad becuase everyone accepted it. Cisco can charge more to relicense an O/S than they charge for a new router because idiots will pay it, or buy another Cisco router (!).
We have three fundamental problems:
1) People don't read anymore.
2) Most people, thanks to our wonderful public education system, are functionally illiterate and wouldn't be able to understand a license written in legalese if they _did_ read it.
3) people think that one maker of a commodity makes better widgets than another maker of that commodity. This is a complete fallacy.
A while back I was "inspecting" (read: opening up) some networking equipment and found that of four 8-port COTS switches, three of them used the EXACT SAME design. There were only very minor layout changes - but the BOM was the same (mostly because the IC vendors issue reference designs).
We need to get off this notion that things we buy are different from other things and realize that all of this garbage is just commodity. Buy on terms, not on names or price.
Actually since the hardware is what people want, and the software is the impediment. Why doesn't some enterprising geeks set up a company which: writes alternative software (firmware), and sells support at a much better rate that what the original configuration would have charged.
"You say company so-and-so will not stand by it's product? No problem. We'll install much better software, and will not charge you an arm and a leg for support."
Their loss, our gain.
In Statistics 101, you hear about the "sample size". The sample size relates to the confidence interval, which is a range of values you expect the actual value to be. In this case, the actual value is the failure rate of all IBM or Company X drives, not just the ones you tested. With a hundred samples, your confidence interval is going to very small, meaning that your estimate is probably very close to the actual value. With only two samples, the confidence interval is going to be very wide, because you can't be sure it's not a fluke.
When you bring a time-scale into it, you either have to measure the failure rate over the same time period, or measure the mean time between failure (MTBF), which is more informative. Technically, in the scenario given, 100% of Company X drives did fail within the same period that IBM's drives were being tested. If they fail in the first five minutes or in the last five minutes of those five years, they still failed. But again, with a sample size that low, you can't use that to reach any kind of conclusion.
However, if you measure the MTBF, even with a small sample size, I think you can say with reasonable confidence that the MTBF of the IBM drives is higher than Company X's, simply because the wide confidence interval (the region of uncertainty) of Company X's MTBF still wouldn't quite make it out to five years.
Of course, none of this takes into consideration the fact that IBM's drives aren't made by IBM anymore, and that (from the words of an ex-IBM engineer) Hitachi doesn't know how to make hard drives worth shit.
When you are buying the product, you are buying an appliance that is designed to do a certain job through whatever means, be it hardware or software. Maybe it's a bunch of gears, maybe it's microcode or visual basic, it should not matter.
** begin rambling **
I believe cisco gets bashed too much by the linux/open-source community. While the particular incident in this article certainly deserves condemnation, it is far from typical of the cisco experience. If we go incessently after even the best of the proprietery software/hardware companies on every little point, how does that improve the image of Linux/Open Source?
My experience with cisco:
- as a system administrator in NY in the mid 90's I was suddenly placed in charge of several cisco routers handling t-1 uplinks for a small corporate datacenter. I called up Cisco, explained that I knew nothing about the equipment but I wanted to make sure I could responsibly manage them - they sent out about 3,000 pages of documentation across 10 bound volumes overnight at no charge and informed me that since at least one of the routers was under support contract, I could call them on regarding router anytime if an issue occured. I studied those manuals for a year or two and developed substantial expertise eventually getting various certifications and becoming a cisco reseller.
When I later switched to one company and then another, I purchased more cisco equipment. In the 10 years since, I've probably managed 50+ cisco routers and switches from the 800 to 7500 series and never has one failed on me in a way that I didn't think Cisco handled it well. And, given the quality and reliability of the equipment, I've never felt that I've had to overpay.
When a problem occurs that neither I or other network engineers can handle, we call up Cisco and are connected to a senior engineer there within 5-10 minutes and they have someone stay online to keep working on the problem - even if it takes 3 8hr shifts of their staff. They provide this quality of support as long as you have a single support contract with them. On their low end routers, the support contracts are only a hundred bucks or so. I can't imagine a linux sysadmin team providing that support for the price.
Furthermore, as long as you have one support contract, their entire support database is available online 24/7 including all software updates. Yes, I try to have smartnet contracts for all my equipment and my customers, but its nice to know that I never have to worry about getting these updates.
Furthermore, there are constant improvements to the software and daily emails with updates on every change to the product lines, software releases, and documentation.
The low end hardware is cheaper than setting up a dedicated pc system and the high end software just can't be matched with Linux yet (although I am a major linux fan and have deployed nearly 700 linux servers). I've funded some efforts at different companies to replace cisco firewalls with Linux systems, none of them was ever so convincing to me that I wouldn't feel more comfortable trusting my customers to Cisco - although the PIX line sucks(consequently the funding). The only area where I think Linux totally outperforms Cisco on the network engineering level is in loadbalancers, LVS and Heartbeat totally rock over the arrowpoint and localdirector generation of products.
I'd really feel more comfortable if the open source community showed more appreciation for the technical companies (even the proprietary ones) that really try to get things right. It would show more class. Eventually, I'm sure, we will have open-source products that compete extremely well with Cisco,
But given there are so many companies with shoddy products that overcharge their customers, it really isn't worth our time to keep bashing cisco now?
In my mind, Sun is 100-1000 times worse - you can't even justify the pricing difference, let alone the incompatibilities and the lack of innovation in their products. And, most of the complaints about Cisco are from sysadmins who really haven't taken enough time to try to understand the Cisco system or even get a simple basic support contract from them. Cisco is different, it's not bad...
** end rambling **
I too find this behavior abhorrent. The very idea of a maintenance contract on top of a sale price is amazing. It is as if an automobile manufacturer sold you a car that was known to suddenly stop because of a software failure but told you unless your car was under a maintenance agreement wouldn't be fixed. If you bought the car used, you would need to relicense the car's OS and then buy a maintenance agreement. Nice.
I'm sorry you either lease the car to me, or you sell it to me. You can't have both. I wouldn't expect free feature enhancements, but I do expect free bug fixes.
This is clearly one of those things we are forced to accept because the manufacturers have us over a barrel. I mean what are you going to do, build your own? Well I think we just might...
I really feel a difference at my company, a major hard drive manufacturer, that people are ready to dump long standing concerns over free software. For example dumping Checkpoint and Microsoft are ideas that people are seriously toying with. Cisco is certainly not the beloved it once was amongst network router people. People are fed up with being abused by businesses, and for the first time in a long time we have an alternative.
I assure you I will fight tooth and nail to keep NetApp out of my company. I know we use NetApp cache servers but I will definitely bring this up as a reason to move back to Squid proxy, instead of Checkpoint and NetApp.
If the manufacturers are playing that game, then you simply don't sell used hardware - you offer a 99 year lease on it to whoever wants to "buy" it. That way, the ownership never changes.
My rights don't need management.
Considering the downturn in the telecom market, I'd think that some of these companies would at least be willing to make new customers with some reasonable terms rather than piss them off. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the downturn happened in the first place.
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
The reason they could have the same failure rate is because the subset you have tested is not sufficient to give statistically correct information.
for example: 100 brand X drives were bought and the first day 2 drives fail, but the remainder continue to work for the next 5 years. This senario would hold true for the above case, and show that for the sample sets, the failure rate was the same.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Godspeed to the developers of alternative OSes for this hardware.
Typical answer for a realestate agent, however the problem is software license, is it for the customer or the unit? If the software license agreement is non-transferable then there is the problem. Obviously companies like Cisco are hurting and putting the hit on internet companies so the can improve their cash flow. Non transferable software agreements are very questionable and I believe their validity needs a court challenge. In this case I think Cisco and the like will lose, this is clearly a case of purchasing property, so that when this property is sold the software can come with, you could do that with MS windows, in fact up until Win XP this was common, used computers stores would sell your computer with your copy of Windows as long as you provided the original disk and key code. No this is a case of dot com gouging it does not come close to being legitimate. How can you prove that the seller knew that the software was a non resaleble item. Most likely they just thought it was their copy of the software, and thought it was fine to sell it. I am sure that Cisco did not go out of their way to inform the original customer about this rediculous and legally questionable restriction.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
The same situation occurs when one company "buys" another, or merges with it. You might think that the assets of the purchased company would include the software and software-on-hardware they purchased.
No.
Typically, there are onerous "relicensing" fees, or in other words, you have to buy again what you already thought you owned.
"Some software companies seem to view merger and acquisition activities as a way to generate additional revenue by demanding a license transfer fee or refusing to allow the transfer of licenses," A merger ahead? Here's what to do
The dot-bomb burst was especially nasty for Cisco. Sure, it was the beginning of an economic slump. And that meant customers were more likely to hold on to their funds "just in case" than shell out for networking gear - even if they could afford too. But it went further than that.
All these failed dot-coms meant there was a very large supply of premium Cisco network kit available for pennies on the dollar. Sales of this used gear directly competed against new sales. Not only was Cisco facing customers not willing to spend, but those who would be willing to spend would not neccissarily mean the sales Cisco desperately needed in these hard times.
The added twist to all this was that a good amount of that gear being auctioned off and competing directly with Cisco for hardware sales had been financed by Cisco. That's right. The used equipment that was competing with Cisco for sales hadn't actually made Cisco any real money to begin with.
I suspect there were individuals within Cisco challenged to "do something" about this situation.
Of course, it's a shame that Cisco is doing this. It may keep some strategists their jobs. It might act as a bulwark against loss of desperately needed sales. But it will cost Cisco good will of their customer base. And with the loss of good will, Cisco will eventually lose sales.
The vast majority of corporations out there have only one myopic goal in mind: Make More Money. They will pollute any river, strip any forest, injure or kill any worker or customer to further their mission. Basicly corporations are thinking "Fuck everyone and the magic hand of Adam Smith will save us". Unless better laws are created to protect the individual's rights in contracts, corporations will continue to screw any one they want.
I know,"Don't like the contact? Don't sign it." What happens when every new car dealer starts this or all the supermarkets require you use their "customer card" to buy from them. The RIAA would like to ban used CD sales. An EULA on all CDs would fix their problem nicely. The Magnuson-Moss Act needs to be revised to allow owner's rights to be transferred to subsequent owners and new laws are needed to heavily restrict conditions manufacturers place on goods during the sale. Of course this will never happen with all the money whores in Congress.
Can some say when the erosion of our rights will stop? I can't.
Welcome to Amerika.
pherris
(Oops, almost forgot: "Screw Flanders, screw Flanders, screw Flanders.")
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Go ask your company accountant about what an asset is worth if it can't be resold for its intended purpose. What this means is that expensive cisco grear that is being deprecated over 5 years is fraud (the kind your CEO can get thrown in jail for). The device only has scrap value once you open the box so it must be deprecated in one tax year. What does this make MCI worth seeing how much cisco gear they own and no one in their right mind would buy all of them.
Support is not the issue here, and no-one is claiming that the manufacturer is obligated to offer support the second buyer.
What is being claimed is that the second buyer should have every right to make use of the software, but the manufacturers are attempting to deny this right. The second buyer is not attempting to enforce any obligations on the manufacturer, but the manufacturer is attempting to enforce a contract that the second buyer had no opportunity to review or agree to.
Your argument is a classic "Straw Man" argument. A "Straw Man" is defined as an attack against an argument that the opponent did not make. I consider it a cheap trick only employed by foolish debaters that either know that thier position is undefendable or are unable to think through a legitimate argument. It is just one example of what are popularly known as Logical Fallacies.
Read, L
This is just an example of the way things work in IT. i.e. the vendor lock-in.
I've seen phone systems like this. You buy the hard ware and there are cards giving lines which have to be activated individually.
So there is custom firmware or an OS per line/port that needs to be paid for before use.
-Kastor
A friend of mine had some dealings with a sleazy company in Montreal that tried to screw him by attempting to steal his work and then telling the police that he stole their work, leading to his arrest. They tried to complete the project using their IBM AS/400 computer. He knew that the OS on their computer was pirated, so he snitched to IBM.
These guys were in the business of buying and selling used IBM equipment. So IBM investigated, and discovered that a lot of the computers they sold had copies of the pirated OS. Seems they were buying the hardware without OS licenses. I don't know if that's because the original sellers had restrictions on selling the licenses, or just that they had transferred the licenses to other machines that they owned. But the upshot was that IBM started contacting the customers of this company, then started demanding license fees. Naturally, the companies were pissed at the sleazy sellers, since they assumed they were buying legit systems.
Ultimately, my friend was acquitted, and the sleazeballs went belly-up.
Once again the Slashdot reaction is totally off base. No wonder SCO and Microsoft have so much trouble taking this crowd seriously.
From the article:
"...when he contacted NetApp to purchase a maintenance agreement for the used system."
Two key words there: maintenance agreement.
First you have to remember that nobody is REQUIRED to provide that service. If you come to me and ask me to provide a service then I'm going to tell you what I will do and how much I want for it. If you don't like it then you can look elsewhere.
Anything else would be the same as you holding a gun to my head and forcing me to provide the service on your terms. That certainly isn't a fair business deal.
So you want to compare this to a Ford. Fine. Go get yourself a 96 Ford Contour with 100,000 miles on it from someone advertising in the local classifieds. Then drive or tow the thing down to your local Ford dealer and demand that they sell you a maintenance agreement for the same price as a current production model.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Oh, you're back? Where's the car? Lemme guess, the guys at the dealership ended up pissing themselves from laughing so hard.
Maybe you should try again. Got that old Compaq 386 laptop out in the garage? Give Compaq/HP a call right now and tell them you want a 5 year maintenance agreement on the damn thing and you're not paying a penny more than $500 for it.
It must be because these are all corporations, right? We all know that anyone trying to do business and make a living is evil.
How about you? Would you want to operate the way Michael Tague expects?
Somehow I don't think that Mr. Tague would do business this way either if he were on the other side.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
it is software that someone made and without it the box is useless.
Yes, but it's software that the company has already been paid for. Why should they be paid again?
From the article:
You may not agree with me, but at least I check my sources.
Read, L
In the case of Cisco... around the time of the Sept. 15, 2000 document, they were seeing an increasing amount of virtually new hardware entering the marketplace for pennys on the dollar from all these failed dot-com's for which Cisco was never paid. It's not a big leap to see how Cisco would want to stop that immediately. And if they can come up with this vague, unspecified cash-cow of a "recertification" process, then it's even better for Cisco.
Having seen what little is available on this laughable process, I'd rather start my own router company than deal with the bullshit. $7000 to "inspect" a 7206VXR. They will only do the inspection during business hours (8-5M-F); the router will be powered down and disassembled during the process; only Cisco is allowed to be present at the inspection. And the best part: it's a binary process... it either passes or fails. No other information is provided -- i.e. why it failed and what we need to do it get it to pass.
.
Yeah. That's the way it goes. If the injustice against you is bad enough, you don't have the energy or assets to fight it.
It's that way with our prepublishing business. We're the best around, but we only have one set of contracts (big ones), and when you count contract creep, they keep it at just under or just over a barely livable wage. If we had the assets to properly pursue more leads, we could get more and better work. Oh, well.
Sounds like your friend has a similar problem.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
...there's plenty of other vendors out there who can sell you a solution for less. So why put up with the used Cisco... because of the name? Is that supposed to warrant that huge markup? They're not putting their best foot forward if that's the way they treat their (potential) customer base. They should do like Sun and offer a TRADE IN for a new model instead. Then they could cannabilze that unit for parts for existing customer.
There's not much use trying to shove Linux on a 486 when you can spend $200 and get a (faster) embedded system to do the same task. Time spent tinkering with it can be saved by going with more current (but low power) hardware, plus you'll have time to decide how you want to recycle the old box.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
One must make sure that whatever hardware they are buying has a copy of the OS with it...backed up several times preferably. It's pretty easy to back up IOS images... I'm not so sure about the NetApp.
... they have to pay for them... of course they may be hit with a re-license issue, but honestly you can still tell the company to f* off.
That way there is no issue when you buy or sell the item. If the customer wants support or updates
The other poster who was talking about first sale has a very good bit of bargaining ammunition...as for the Cisco rep who made the other guy pay after the fact I would have also told that guy to f*** off. The hardware comes with an IOS image and the customer doesn't have to buy support from Cisco... they just won't get any new IOS images or help from Cisco.
Quote: "They will pollute any river, strip any forest, injure or kill any worker or customer to further their mission".
Interestingly, this is similar to the old Soviet. After NASA flew the Earth Resources Technology Satellites in the mid-late 1970s people could finally measure the amount of pollution in the USSR as well as the US. It turned out that with a GDP roughly 40% of the US the USSR manage to pump out an equal amount of pollutants.
Indeed, welcome to Amerika!
In this hypothetical situation, hey, if you want IRIX on it, then pay the man. Otherwise, all you've got is a pile of hardware, which is exactly what you've paid for. You could always attempt to install NetBSD on it.
The point is, if you want IRIX, get a license from the makers of IRIX. Otherwise, you get to power it up and watch the LED! And perhaps play with the boot PROM! Joy! (In this case, the point is rather moot because you can get almost up-to-date copies of IRIX for non-commercial use from SGI for free.)
If you bought a Cisco/NetApp box... way to go! Nice pile of hardware! Oh wait, you want to actually use it as a router/filer? Yes, you'll need to get (hopefully legally) the software for it. What were you expecting? Why would anyone expect to get free (as in cost) software for closed, proprietary hardware?
The hardware and the software are discrete entities, and all of this was made quite straightforward to the original purchaser of the system. Other than a distaste for how the legal issues of software licensing works, there's no reason for anyone to be complaining.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
And don't feel smug because the bad guys are being caught. These are the tip of the iceberg. Like any crime, the vast majority get away with it. Welcome to the "pro-business" world. By the way, if so called "tort reform" goes through you will have severely reduced ability to sue. Enron was sued in the mid 90s, but the Gingrich Republicans passed a law that made the suit impossible. It went all the way to the Supreme Court and the case was thrown out. If they had been taken to court, it is a least possible that they would have been deterred from their later excesses. (Note: the bill was passed over the veto of then President Clinton.)
Bush just signed an executive order that gives oil companies complete immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution for all activities pertaining to Iraqi oil. Not just in Iraq. Anywhere U.S. law applies. The actual language is "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment or other judicial process is prohibited and shall be deemed null and void..." It helps to have friends in high places, espically if you plan to steal...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Someone reminds me when, let's say Microsoft, provided you support for software after you transfered it (illegally) to another computer. This just never happened to me or to any of my accuintances as far as I know.
Hence product activation from software vendors to enfore this part of the EULA.
The only mechanism hardware vendors can have is to track serial numbers (Cisco) or Service Tags (Dell) and enforce entitlement at the device level.
You can take a cheap pentium, stuff it full of ethernet cards and run OpenBSD on it and it'll do things you can't do with a Cisco router that costs $50,000.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
AFAIK at least in Germany those license terms are unlawful. There is a supreme court (Bundesgerichtshof) decision from the early 80's where the late Nixdorf Company was forbidden to charge for the software of second hand equipment.
This practice really has to stop. I'm glad someone is finally addressing the problem. You're just wandering through Fry's, pick up a network card, and next thing you know, some company representative jumps at you with a pointed stick. A friend of mine lost an eye. I swear.
[insert witty quote here]
Their command line is very cisco-like and their density is unbelievable. I just had the opportunity to test a couple of them for a customer of mine and was amazed.
I'm now recommending them to more of my customers.
However, if Alice leases Bob the Cisco, Alice is still the owner, they've just got the box at Bob's premises, and if the box needs a maintenance contract, Bob can pay Alice the cost of the contract. That doesn't mean that Alice is still administering the box - that's Bob's problem, and Alice hopefully has the sense to change the enable password before telling it to Bob, and Bob hopefully has the sense to also change it, just as both of them would in a regular sale.
The problem with this is that it's fine if Alice is a financially stable company that's just getting rid of the old routers to buy new ones - it's not a practical solution if Alice is selling off the assets of her dead dotcom, including the routers and the furniture. Sometimes you can work around this by having Alice sell the company along with the equipment, but that's usually only useful if there's just one piece of equipment to sell, and if the "company" can be sold without the debts, risks of lawsuits, etc., which usually requires far too much legal work to bother with on a $400 or even $4000 router.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You can have computers now adays for as little as 200 US$. New.
Or buy a second hand one 2 or 3 years old (that is not old, and most probably is neither unreliable).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or TVs, or DV players, radios with alarms, etc.
What a fscking great idea!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People here are not understanding what's going on here. Customers are trying to buy cheap hardware on eBay rather than buying new hardware directly from the company in question. Now that the bubble has burst and all of this excess hardware has flooded the grey market, everyone wants a good deal on equipment.
So, a company like Cisco has two options: 1. Go out of business because you're not selling any new product, or 2. Drive up the cost of maintenance contracts on the used hardware to force your customers to buy new hardware regardless.
I work for a large computer manufacturer that sold a ton of equipment during the dot com boom. Now the grey-market guys are competing directly against us. The problem with the grey market guys is that they will buy the hardware at an auction, then refurbish it on their own. Lots of times they will put non-standard parts in the boxes (hard drives and other components that are not approved configurations or tested equipment), then package the server up and sell it on eBay. When the customer buys the box from them, and they want to roll it into their existing service contract, we say "Fine, we'll support your box, but first it must be recertified, and by the way it costs $250 an hour to do the recertification, plus the full retail price of any parts that need to be replaced because they're not up to spec."
Usually the customer will get burned once or twice and realize that the cheap $1000 box they bought off eBay just ended up costing them $5000 just to recertify it because the grey market reseller put hard drives in it that weren't approved, plus whatever the standard maintenance costs are, and they won't buy grey market gear any more.
It's just a way of companies protecting their revenue streams. They're not going to encourage you to buy shoddy hardware off the grey market and then replace all of your bad parts for free under your maintenance agreement, are they?
Another thing that is quite common with the high-end Cisco and other type of gear is that a grey market reseller will buy a lot of gear that was damaged, like say in WTC during 9/11. They will get one big router or server under maintenance, then load it up with bad parts. Call support and say "send someone onsite, this system is down." Well, support comes out and gladly replaces all the bad parts and gets them back up and running, then next week, the grey market reseller loads the box back up with more bad parts. Repeat ad infinitum, and get all new parts for free. We've had to revoke several maintenance agreements because of that.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
ea puts "not for resale by owner" on all their games. how exactly does me buying this game not allow me to sell it? i'll do whatever i damn well please, even set fire to it if i want.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.