South Australia Refuses To Stop Using An Expired, MS-DOS-Based Health Software (abc.net.au)

jaa101 writes: The Australian state of South Australia is being sued for refusing to stop using CHIRON, an MS-DOS-based software from the '90s that stores patient records. Their license expired in March of 2015, but they claim it would be risky to stop using it. CHIRON's vendor, Working Systems, says SA Health has been the only user of CHIRON since 2008 when they declined to migrate to the successor product MasterCare ePAS.
SA Health has 64 sites across South Australia -- all of which are apparently still using the MS-DOS-based health software from the 1990s.

Comments

If they pay the license fee

[justthinkit]

If they pay the license fee, what does it matter what version they use? XP should be available along side 10.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Lirodon]

No, they can't pay the license fee. They will no longer sell the license because it is end-of-life, but using it requires a license, hence the software may no longer be used by anyone.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Yvan256]

If I understand correctly, their CHIRON license expired in March of 2015 but Working Systems doesn't want to renew it.

So Working Systems are suing South Australia for using a product without a license but won't renew said license.

I can't wait to see the court verdict on this one. It smells like abandonware to me. It probably won't help with old software in the rest of the world but it could set a legal precedent for Australia. Microsoft doesn't want to sell Windows 7 licenses anymore in a few months? You can legally copy and use it.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Anonymous Coward]

They've probably paid the development cost 10 times over by now ...

This is why open source folks. Software vendors are assholes.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[AchilleTalon]

You cannot force a company to sell licenses for a software they don't support anymore and maintain staff to maintain a piece of software the revenues cannot justify to. So, don't hope too much from the court verdict. There is no law that state you must sell and support a piece of software forever.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[Anonymous Coward]

And filing lawsuits against your loyal customers to try to force them to upgrade to your latest "new/shiny" is probably not a good business plan either.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[ilguido]

You cannot force a company to sell licenses for a software they don't support anymore and maintain staff to maintain a piece of software the revenues cannot justify to.

Yes, but who is saying that they need "support" and a staff? That piece of software has worked for some 25 years now, I supposed that the support they need is none and they're just happy to be able to use it.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck them! Keep using it!

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

In this case, they are trying to yank out a perfectly fine, if older, medical system, and there are duties to care that may come into play.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Keith Mickunas]

Where does it indicate that the state is trying to force them to maintain a staff to support this software?

It seems very wrong to me that the company can tell the state to stop using a piece of software that they have been using for years. They can provide a license that offers no support, no updates and no warranty of any kind.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[Anonymous Coward]

The software should be considered abandonware and part of the public domain. Anyone should be free to download and use it for any purpose -- software vendor is not culpable for damages from its use.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[wisnoskij]

"maintain staff to maintain a piece of software"

Ya, I am sure this 30 year old piece of software, that runs on MS-DOS, gets loads of updates.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Richard_at_work]

And what happens if there is suddenly a major issue the week after the "its ok, theres no support really needed on this account" extension to the licence period is signed? All shit breaks loose, thats what happens.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Anonymous Coward]

provide a copy of the source code to their customers, so the customers can support it themselves.

This is exactly what I did when I did an end-of-life on an old program. Each active customer got a complete copy of the all the source code, tools and utilities. They have no distribution rights but they can maintain it as needed. End of story.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Zocalo]

I doubt it. Quite likely the licensing agreement between Working Systems and SW Health is part of a bespoke contract rather than the kind of license that comes with software for the average Joe's PC - especially given that it's strongly implied that there was an on-going license fee until March 2015 or some other kind of cut-off at that point. Assuming that whoever wrote the original contract knew their stuff and put in specific clauses to cover the inevitable software EoL, I suspect this is going to be resolved pretty smoothly with either SW Health being able to continue using the systems in perpetuity albeit without any support from Working Systems, or SW Health being found in breach of license and compelled to update their systems - and maybe pay additional penalties as well.

Frankly, if I were in SW Australia, I'd be hoping for the latter - and fast - although I suspect it's probably already too late. If SW Health is using software this obsolete in one part of their operation, then there is a good chance that they'll be doing so elsewhere too and, if so, then it's probably just a matter of time before some one figures out a way in and dumps a whole bunch of people's health records on the Internet. Given the typical pace of legal proceedings though, I'm guessing we'll be reading about a breach of SW Health's systems long before we find out how this license spat is to be resolved.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[St.Creed]

It works for Oracle...

Re:If they pay the license fee

[mrchaotica]

You cannot force a company to sell licenses for a software they don't support anymore and maintain staff to maintain a piece of software the revenues cannot justify to.

Sure, that's fine. But what you can do is simply declare the software to be in the Public Domain, since the only thing stopping that from happening automatically is government fiat in the first place!

Re:If they pay the license fee

[del_diablo]

WHAT would break lose? The only remaining issues are
1. System being network connected. But its MS DOS, so I hope they had the sanity to isolate it
2. Parts breaking down and needing replacement
3. Incompatibility on new parts
4. Somehow producing new error codes(unlikely)

Re:If they pay the license fee

[AchilleTalon]

I doubt you can force anyone to release publicly source code of something they are the legit owner even if they no longer support it.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[AchilleTalon]

It is not about actual updates it is about the responsability that comes with selling a license for the software you actually wrote.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[AchilleTalon]

For the court to declare the software public domain, it must first appropriate the software. No court will do such a thing.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Yvan256]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

We all think it's still very far away, but they're still using an MS-DOS system in 2016 so I wouldn't push that future problem aside just yet.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[HiThere]

It's not far away, but people are already shifting to 64-bit time clocks. That pushes the 2038 problem so far into the future that it really *is* safe to ignore it. More work is still needed, but it's already being addressed.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[fustakrakich]

Their "ownership" is really a government granted license, a privilege. And it can and should be revoked when they abuse it. End of life and end of the copyright license should occur at the same time.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[fustakrakich]

Eminent domain. Works for land, it can work for copyrights and patents. And yes, American courts have done so.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[HiThere]

Your use of the term "obsolete" in regard to working software displays either bias or ignorance. Despite the term "bit rot" software doesn't become obsolete. It may become less appropriate than a more modern version, but quite often the "more modern version" is actually significantly inferior to the older version. And running on MS-DOS doesn't imply that it doesn't do the job more properly than any available potential replacement. That they are willing to go to the effort of running it under virtualization (that's a guess, but a pretty sure one) is an indication that they find it more desirable than alternatives.

Switching versions of software always has the potential of corrupting your data files, or just being impossible due to incompatible data formats of lack of needed features. That was the problem that originally convinced me to switch to FOSS software. With FOSS software at least you can hire someone to maintain the features you need, and the file formats are decodeable. It often isn't worth the effort involved, but sometimes it is, and you can always run under virtualization. (After I had decided to switch of FOSS software for this reason, the licenses of FOSS software, especially the GPL, convinced me to switch to a FOSS OS...in particular Linux. But the decision to prefer FOSS software came first, and originally I had no intention of switching OSes.)

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Gadget_Guy]

It is not about actual updates it is about the responsability that comes with selling a license for the software you actually wrote.

If SA Health want to keep using the software after it stops being officially supported then they assume the risk. It's simple!

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Rockoon]

I can't wait to see the court verdict on this one. It smells like abandonware to me.

Adobe no longer sells Photoshop 7.0 Does that make it abandonware too?

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Megol]

MSDOS actually have no date problem before 1980+127=2107, almost a hundred years in the future. IIRC but I'm pretty sure I do.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Rockoon]

Sure. But you can decide that, if they're not supporting it, nobody needs a license in order to keep using it.

If unsupported software no longer needs a license to use, then the license of unsupported software is null and void, correct?

So this applies to Linux 1.0? No?

Lets ask for a standard that doesnt destroy the GPL.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Rockoon]

Sure, that's fine. But what you can do is simply declare the software to be in the Public Domain, since the only thing stopping that from happening automatically is government fiat in the first place!

...and Linux 1.0 is no longer GPL either, now its Public Domain!! Yay! ...wait...no?

Careful what you wish for.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Zocalo]

All good and valid points, but taking "obsolete" to automatically mean "of no further use" is an awfully narrow definition and certainly not the one I was intending which, to be clear, was that it hasn't been developed by the original vendor for more than a decade, is no longer supported at all, and has been replaced by a more up to date version by the vendor. In the same vein, I think that most people would accept that steam trains are obsolete for passenger transport in the first world, yet there are dozens of such trains still running nostalgia trips on a regular basis in the UK alone, and far more across Europe and the US - again obsolete does not imply that it can't serve a purpose. Yes, it might well still get the job done for them, but you also have to weigh up the risks; specifically, the risk of something going wrong with an upgrade - which can be mitigated that with a well thought out roll-back procedure or interim parallel operation anyway - versus the risk of someone compromising a system that almost certainly isn't as compliant with current security practices, no matter how well they might have wrapped it up in VMs, firewalls or other more up to date tech.

Yes, in an ideal world they'd have taken the OSS route (and if compelled to switch might even do so), but think of the timescale and specialist nature of the software. When this system was deployed (mid-1990s), Linux was still an experimental OS that a few organizations who were capable of supporting it in-house were only just starting to deploy in production systems for things like FTP, SMTP & WWW services that were mostly ports from commercial *NIX - specialist software was basic at best and vendors using it for commercial systems of any kind very thin on the ground. The realistic choices for a system like this would have basically boiled down to something put together by a specialist vendor and based on either MS DOS using something like dBase/FoxPro at the low-end, and equally bespoke systems running on commercial *NIX based on DB2/Informix/Oracle at the high-end; the chances of an OSS solution are extremely slim, to say the least, and it's doubtful that any vendor would hand over source code without a large financial consideration, if they'd entertain the notion at all.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[HiThere]

I don't find that usage of "obsolete" to be useful to anyone outside of marketing. It is true that there are definite costs to using software for an environment that is no longer maintained, but I do so every day for some software written for Linux 2.2. I don't consider it obsolete, because I have found no acceptable replacement. Occasionally I look for a better way to virtualize it.

There is other software that I WOULD handle in the same way, except that it's illegal...and I can't afford a lawyer and a court case. But I certainly understand the need or desire to continue running the version of the software that hasn't been updated into unusability. And based on my past experience I wouldn't be surprised to find that some vitally needed features of the older version have been trimmed from the more recent ones.

That they essentially couldn't use OSS software I can "sort-of" accept. At the time custom written software wasn't at all uncommon, and being in a niche wouldn't have been a problem for a bespoke solution. (At that time I was earning my living as an in-house developer of bespoke solutions.)

All that said, they made a stupid "purchasing decision". But that doesn't mean that they should be required to put people's lives at risk.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[Anonymous Coward]

The SA Government can't force the company to maintain it, but the company can't stop them from using it.

Check out Part VII of the Australian Copyright Act 1968.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[St.Creed]

Yep. They make Microsoft look like the good guys. If you can manage that you know you're in deep trouble.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[Rockoon]

Adobe doesn't prevent you from using it if you already bought it

..and neither would this company.

In this case the customer decided NOT to buy, instead wanting a subscription model.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[batkiwi]

Support contracts and usage licenses are completely different things.

For example, if you bought windows 95 you still have a license and can legally use it, it is just that MS provides NO support for it. Part of my job recently has been doing windows server 2k3 migrations due to extended support EOL, and about 50% of the software on it is out of support contract as well, but is still legally licensed.

No one is trying to force them to support it, but if they will not accept money for the licenses then it's easy to argue that the current license cost is de-facto zero.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Aristos Mazer]

It may seem wrong, but if that's the license agreement that the state agreed to, then that's the agreement. The company now has a right to enforce that agreement. If you don't like a EULA, you need to protest it when you buy the software, not 20+ years later when chickens come home to roost.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[jezwel]

Part VI has some also (~pg 400):

Application to Tribunal in relation to licences
Refusal or failure to grant licence under licence scheme
(4) An organization that claims that it is representative of persons requiring licences in cases to which a licence scheme does not apply (including cases where a licence scheme has not been formulated or is not in operation) and:
(a) that a licensor has refused or failed to grant the licences, or to procure the grant of the licences, and that in the circumstances it is unreasonable that the licences should not be granted; or
(b) that a licensor proposes that the licences should be granted subject to the payment of charges, or to conditions, that are unreasonable;
may apply to the Tribunal under this section.

Order dealing with application under subsection (4),
(6C) If the Tribunal is satisfied that the claim of an applicant under subsection (4) is well-founded, the Tribunal must either:
(a) make an order specifying, in respect of the matters specified in the order, the charges, if any, and the conditions, that the Tribunal considers reasonable in the circumstances in relation to persons who:
(i) are specified in the order (whether by reference to a class or otherwise); and
(ii) were represented by the applicant or were parties to the application; or
(b) order that a licence be granted, in the terms proposed by the applicant, the licensor concerned or another party to the application, to each person who:
(i) is specified in the order (whether by reference to a class or otherwise); and
(ii) was represented by the applicant or was a party to the application.

Definition of refusal or failure to grant a licence
(7) A reference in this section to a failure to grant a licence, or to procure the grant of a licence, shall be read as a reference to a failure to grant the licence, or to procure the grant of the licence, as the case may be, within a reasonable time after a request to do so.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[jezwel]

You cannot force a company to sell licenses for a software they don't support anymore

You can in Australia.

and maintain staff to maintain a piece of software the revenues cannot justify to.

This however appears true.

There is no law that state you must sell and support a piece of software forever.

The copyright act of Australia includes sections on being able to acquire a licence for software where the licence is not being sold. I added details about this further down.
Support however is an entirely different notion, and is not covered.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[guruevi]

Although the Queen could probably do that, most common law countries these days have protections against the government simply seizing property.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[ChunderDownunder]

Well in this case, the "new/shiny" is itself 10-15 years old and the vendor migrated every other licensee to their successor product 8 years ago.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Macfox]

Except this is the commonwealth government which has the power of compulsory acquisition. This is normally enacted by the federal government, but state enact it also. Allows the government to acquire property (not just land, but whole banks) for the government's needs on just terms (market value). In this case it would be very little.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[ChunderDownunder]

maybe not 'loads' but it is conceivable that 'some'. Legislation either at a state or federal level may require collection of new or modified data which may necessitate a form change for compliance.

Hence software may continue to receive a trickle of updates over decades so long as there's a licensee and a vendor willing to support it.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[NicBenjamin]

Why not?

They'd do it for your house if they wanted to build a road, why would software be any different?

Granted in both cases the government would actually have to pay for the privilege of seizing your shit, but it's not like 10-year-old unsupported DOS apps have massive commercial value.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[Bert64]

The AC above has a much better solution - software becomes unsupported by the original vendor, so provide a copy of the source and indefinite usage rights to your customers but no right of redistribution. The customer can then choose to continue supporting it themselves or not.

In the case of Linux 1.0 the customer already has the source and already has distribution rights under the GPL, so nothing would change.

Of course the real fault is on the customers, they became dependent on software knowing full well that it had an expiry date but failed to develop a proper migration strategy in advance of that date.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[luis_a_espinal]

It works for Oracle...

I'm not familiar of such a case where Oracle has sued someone to upgrade.

Oracle licenses do not have timed expirations. You have end of service past the EOL date, but that license is yours to keep for the number of CPUs you paid for. The company I work for has, for better or worse, tons of licenses on many Oracle products, some of them past EOL (which we are migrating mind you.)

The EOL simply means we won't get tech support for any new bug, or problems upgrading the OS in which the EOL'ed version was last certified. But once paid, we can use that till the Sun swallows the Earth. And I've worked with several other Oracle shops with paid professional licenses and stuff. I've never heard of Oracle suing a company because the software it is using is EOL or with an expired professional license.

I'm not a fan of Oracle, but that claim you are making, when did that happen?

Re:If they pay the license fee

[nedlohs]

As I read it Australian law says the federal and state governments can force the selling of licenses -http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s153k.html

What are you basing your legal analysis on?

Re: If they pay the license fee

[Bert64]

Well the people making the procurements should have done a proper long term risk analysis and mitigation strategy before committing to the software in question...

For example, the software had a known expiry date - what was their business continuity plan for this inevitable event? They should have had a plan in place to migrate to something else before the software expired.
The software is available from only one vendor - what was their exit strategy should this vendor cease to exist, cease offering the current product or significantly change their terms?

Computers have become critical to most organizations now, so it's extremely important to do a proper risk analysis.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[Hall]

Clearly the license is a legal or contractual thing, not a technical one.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[tendrousbeastie]

But they ought to be careful about doing so.

If they force this to become abandonware, or remove the need from a license, then you are setting the company's old software up in direct competition to their new software. Many people who would otherwise have paid good money for their new software (presumably seeing that the benefit it gives them is greater than the purchase costs) might now choose to make do with the older software which they can now get for free.

It is not fair to force the company into this position, but more importantly it will cause some companies to reconsider their decision to invest time and money in creating such types of software at all, if the risk is that they end up forced into competition with themselves.

It might be that you are happy with this trade-off, but one should be aware of the costs of such a decision.

Re:If they pay the license fee

[stoatwblr]

MS-DOS was/is y2k compliant. It was windows 3(.1)(1) that wasn't.

People are confusing support contracts with use licenses.

Plenty of software has time-limited use rules (annual licensing) - that used to be the norm until MS turned up with "good enough" software that was cheap and one-time-payment for use.

Don't confuse that with a one-time payment for use and annual support contracts (which is what Oracle, and even Redhat use)

Re:If they pay the license fee

[stoatwblr]

Even if the government revokes copyright (or declares eminent domain), they cannot force the company to release the source code.

Without that, support is limited to instructing people how to do particular tasks and once something crops out the software can't handle, it's game over.

Re: If they pay the license fee

[St.Creed]

Well, Oracle did recently sue Mars, although not over upgrades but over how to count licenses. So you're right: to my knowledge they didn't sue over upgrades.

They do seem to sue clients over a lot of other issues though. But the two cases I've been involved in directly with Oracle never got to court. They just lead to customers ditching Oracle ASAP.

Re:FreeDOS is still supported

[jader3rd]

FreeDOS is still supported, so I don't see a problem with this. Why change it if it works?

You're assuming that it works for them. It's possible that every employee hates using something so ancient. Also, laws are being changed\introduced around medicine and software. You don't want to be stuck on a system that can be legislated away. You at least want to be on a system that has a migration path away from it.

Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[Anonymous Coward]

Bits don't rot.

"The company said a licence extension for CHIRON was not possible because it was too old and no longer supported."

If you've never placed a support call in the 13 years since installation, if you've got backup hardware that will still run the stuff, if it's not connected to a network (MS-DOS presumably isn't), if it's not getting patched (because it's not connected to a network), then there's no risk of a change breaking the existing configuration -- and in those circumstances, what does it matter if it's not "supported?"

Sorry, vendor. I'm sorry that your old software was so un-agile that it was actually "done" in the '90s and probably needs no further patches in order to remain fit for purpose until 2038. A pity for all vendors whose business models have pivoted towards Service As A Substitute for software, but fortunately, these guys never got on the upgrade treadmill. EPAS 2017: Hey, let's change the UX to "Flat!" this year so all the nurses have to relearn where the menu options are beneath that hamburger menu. It'll be hell for the end users, but the marketing guys think it looks great in a PowerPoint slide deck, and this is Enterprise Software; we're not trying to sell it to the physicians!

And sorry, devs. Sorry that the human body works pretty much the same today as it did in 200,000 years ago. And that basic medical care works pretty much the same today as it did 50 years ago. And that even the bureacracy "required" to oversee the recordkeeping associated with "meatbag came in, was assigned bed, was assigned physician, who performed care" doesn't change as fast the latest Javascript framework.

Some software is just Done.

Re:Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[bazorg]

I'm not a big fan of replying to AC, but here goes....

When enterprise-grade software is supplied, normally there are plenty of contractual terms that go with it. Requiring that the whole stack (operating system, database, application, whatever else) is under current support from the suppliers is a good demand in exchange for offering guarantees of break-fix support. The company providing support for the patient care component does not want to have the customer making claims of breach of SLA when the database component failed and its respective supplier has halted development and won't take new trouble tickets for the specific version in use since 10 years ago.

In the MS world of licensing where I have some modest experience, I've seen that it is common for MS to charge an annual maintenance fee in return for a number of entitlements for the user. Things like access to patches and upgrade rights (ie: you don't buy the software licence again when a new version comes up, just grab the new version and move on) are not unusual. On top of this, I've also seen independent software vendors and MS technology partners build up more stuff that goes on top of the MS product that was licensed in the first place. These vendors sometimes use the same model of maintenance payments every year to have some sort of cash coming from those customers who bought additional software or customisations to the base product. If the maintenance payments are not made to MS, they do not switch things off (to my knowledge at least) but if the customer changes their mind, MS will charge lapsed years or ask for a new licence to be purchased. Independent vendors may have their own policies in relation to the software they develop on the MS application/stack.

Having read both articles (wow!), I get the impression that while this state in Australia used to be but is no longer a large customer account. They are really the only people using this software any more, and it is a pain in the backside to make a proper upgrade path just for them. They opted out of incremental upgrades, and now a big bang will look expensive and complicated. It is also possible that the software vendor is under obligation to offer guarantees IF they do offer another year or more of maintenance or extend the licence for their software. In what appears to be an exercise in bridge burning, they want the customer to stop using their software unless they completely replace it with a supported version. It's not very Microsoft-y thing to do, but between MS licensing rules, independent vendor licensing rules and specific contracts made when this deal was a big one for a whole state in Australia, this might have exceptional treatment agreed somewhere.

To me it looks like both parties want out of the contract they have and the company going to court is another way to put pressure on the other side.
Some have written in this forum that this would never be a problem if they just used open source software, which is IMHO optimistic. Legacy crap is complicated for everyone, 10 or 20 years of it will make anyone want to have a fresh start. To paraphrase another favourite AC of mine, they really should go with supported apps, that get upgraded and updated on the fly by a cloud services provider. Legacy programmes can be a pain in the backside, compared to centrally managed apps. Cloud! Apps!

Re:Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[del_diablo]

So its a court case to permanently mark all formalities? Or is it a court case because the system is practically abandenware, but the corporation wants their cash?

Re:Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[bazorg]

I'd say both both. It might be a court case to get the state of South Australia to pay their last bill and then cancel the existing contract without penalty to the supplier.

Re:Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[Malc]

Pay me now or pay me later. Can they even get replacemnt hardware to run this now?

Re:Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[Sarten-X]

Please never use Microsoft as a recommended licensing model. It's never the lesser evil, but I digress...

The situation is simple. The health provider is using software without a license, and the software developer refuses to issue a license. To draw an analogy, this is really little different (legally) from a book author who contracted to allow a movie studio to use his work, but now that contract is expired. The raised questions are a little more difficult, calling into question the very nature of software as a copyrightable work.

It has long been held that executing software necessarily involves copying (from disk to memory) and often modifying (in memory) the program code, and usually produces derivative works (the output). Those actions are restricted by copyright laws, and that's what you get a license for. Open-source licenses don't really change that legal standard; they just offer perpetual licenses as the norm. Without the license, it is perfectly reasonable (from a legal perspective) that the health provider would need to stop using the software. However, it may be possible that even migrating off of the platform requires those rights, so to require the health care provider to entirely cease using the copyrighted code may be unconscionable, as it causes an inordinate expense to move to something else. On the other hand, the choice to not upgrade earlier was the health care provider's, so it wasn't an act of bad faith on the software vendor's part, and wasn't unfair when the contract was written.

From the perspective of legal precedent, forcing the vendor to provide ongoing licenses would imply that license contracts no longer necessarily expire at the end of declared terms. That would mean that creation of a copyrightable asset also becomes a liability, as licensing a piece of intellectual property may make one beholden to the customer without knowing the contract balance up front. As an alternative, allowing a legal classification for "abandonware", as so many Slashdotters are calling for, is a legal minefield.To use the earlier literary analogy, should an author's characters and stories be open for anyone to use, just because the original stories are no longer being actively published at a particular moment?

Despite Slashdot's knee-jerk reaction, the answers are subtle and nuanced. Whatever happens needs to fairly balance the needs of a high-risk consumer who made poor decisions, with a high-risk producer who is refusing to accommodate a customer. I look forward to a court's decision, and fully expect that Slashdot will fail to report on it.

Re:Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[batkiwi]

Please never use Microsoft as a recommended licensing model. It's never the lesser evil, but I digress...

What specific issues do you have with MS's corporate licensing model?

-if you own a software license bought outright at any time you own it in perpetuity
-CALs are bought yearly (typically) but are "essentially" the same no matter the platform or age. There are exceptions for this (dynamics CRM end user vs admin licenses, etc) but in general it works this way
-Licenses are separate from support contracts, so you can opt for zero support for zero fee, or have MS premier support on-site 24/7 for a HUGE fee
-You can optionally pay an annuity to get free upgrades for any software you use, but again not required
-they offer bespoke support contracts when needed. An entity I was working with required security and break-fix updates for win2k3, which is out of ANY sort of support lifecycle, but MS was willing to provide them for $XXXX per server (it wasn't cheap, but at least it was available....)

Re:Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[Sarten-X]

My personal nightmare was three VM servers on two identical ESXi VM hosts (a primary, replicated for a hot spare), running four quad-core CPUs virtually allocated to only commit 8 cores to each VM, and each VM also got 4 GB of memory. One of those VMs ran our Exchange server. We also had a Win7 VM to run on the server, and needed to upgrade about a dozen WinXP clients to Windows 7. Several new computers had been purchased prior to this project with Win7 already installed, and they weren't going to be changed at this time. In addition, we also had several appliances that needed service accounts (like the voicemail-to-email feature on our PBX). We also wanted to move toward volume licensing, so we could avoid the spreadsheet lists of license keys.

We called our preferred software vendor, and got their Microsoft-certified Licensing Specialist (and the fact that there is such a thing is a big warning) to figure out what we needed. A different vendor gave us a different answer. We also contacted Microsoft directly, and got another different answer.

As I recall, they were, in no particular order, and with elements shuffled around by my attempts to repress the memories:

• A boatload of device CALs, 12 copies of Windows Server 2012 (3 VMs * 2 servers * 4 processors / 2 processors per license), a special VM license for Windows 7, then several retail Win7 licenses for the desktop machines.
• A mix of device and user CALs, 6 copies of Windows Server 2012, and individual retail upgrades for Win7.
• Only user CALs, 3 copies of Windows Server, a volume license for all the Win7 systems.

I remember something about a suggestion to scrap our ESXi infrastructure, and running Windows Server as a Hyper-V host because that'd give us some VM allocations, too.

-if you own a software license bought outright at any time you own it in perpetuity

Unless you're using a capability of that outright-license software that is separately licensed under Software Assurance, in which case you can only use that feature while your SA entitlement is active.

-CALs are bought yearly (typically) but are "essentially" the same no matter the platform or age. There are exceptions for this (dynamics CRM end user vs admin licenses, etc) but in general it works this way

CALs do not expire, but they also do not transfer, and they do not apply to other versions. It doesn't matter that you bought too many CALs in 2008, because you'll be buying all new ones for 2012.

-Licenses are separate from support contracts, so you can opt for zero support for zero fee, or have MS premier support on-site 24/7 for a HUGE fee

Unless "support" is in the form of Software Assurance, in which case you must purchase SA to get certain volume licenses, and certain products are not available with SA, and certain products are not available without volume licensing.

You can optionally pay an annuity to get free upgrades for any software you use, but again not required

I think, again, you're referring to SA. Please tell me how to get Windows 7 Enterprise N without Software Assurance, because nobody has yet been able to accomplish that legally.

Re:Supported/ Fuck "Supported."

[bazorg]

Please never use Microsoft as a recommended licensing model. It's never the lesser evil, but I digress...

Just to clarify, I used the example of Microsoft enterprise licensing because it's the one I am familiar with and could well be related to what's happening in the original article. There's no recommendation on my part and I am fully aware that in the 1000+ product lines that Microsoft has/had there are many license types and variants and I don't know all there is about them. IANAL, etc, etc.

The situation is simple. The health provider is using software without a license, and the software developer refuses to issue a license. To draw an analogy,

If it's simple why do we need an analogy!? Why doesn't your analogy include cars???!?! (I'm joking).

I suspect that throughout the article there is an oversimplification in language, leading to the omission of the type of contracts in question - this is probably NOT about a software license. Instead I thin it is about a maintenance and support entitlement that the company does not wish to extend, while the customer might be prevented by law and insurance audits to use a business critical piece of software without it being somehow under a reliable and enforceable support agreement. Microsoft (probably) are not a party to this agreement but get named here because the vendor cannot seriously commit to any suitable support SLA due to every MS component that underlies their 'solution' being itself obsolete and out of support.

Re:FreeDOS is still supported

[Anonymous Coward]

The original company wrote software which worked, they decided that had been a mistake. Easier to con people and then stiff them on consultancy fees fixing stuff it. The old system is simply a reminder to everyone how it used to be.

Re:Prevents Cylons

[jfdavis668]

By your command

Vendor is bitter

[Anonymous Coward]

Vendor missed out on tender for new system and wants a piece of the action. EPAS has basically been an unmitigated disaster and this is just icing on the cake. Expect SA gov to spread the cheeks as they do for many vendors. IT procurement is SA gov is compete joke. Zero penalties for vendors that fail to deliver. It's the best gravy train around. Whole of government mail system was another massive F up. 18 months late and massive interruption to key systems and probably millions of dollars spent propping up a failing system that should have been retired years ago. Yet nothing happens. Same ppl in charge making the same mistakes. And they wonder why SA's the worst performing state in AU.

software overflows

[Joe_Dragon]

Now software this old likely may have low limits that when hit can just crash / error out or even overflow. Now any of them happen is a bad thing for patient records

Abandonware?

[theshowmecanuck]

So should we have a new class of abandonware? Why should someone have to stop using software if the makers abandoned it? This sounds like a kind of legalized extortion or something.

Re:Abandonware?

[Sneftel]

Because that's what they agreed to. They signed a contract saying "We'll pay you X amount of dollars, and use the software for Y amount of years, and then stop using the software. We understand that you're under no obligation to allow us to renew the license, for any amount of dollars." Which was certainly a really, really stupid contract for them to have signed, but hey, here we are.

CHIRON

[freeze128]

In Deus Ex - Human Revolution, Adam Jensen lives in the CHIRON building. Coincidence? I don't think so!

Good for them!

[freeze128]

A DOS based software product is likely to be more secure from remote hacks, and from cloud-provider based security breaches. Thanks to VM technology, this program could be usable for decades!

Re:Good for them!

[subanark]

I would think it would be more risky. Chances are the data is replicated on every machine, and is "transmitted" (network or copy by physical media) in an unencrypted form. In general I would consider it less risky using a newer system that doesn't store all the data in one place. Microsoft, Amazon, Google spend a lot more effort in securing their data than pretty much any other tech company.

Also can you provide examples of "cloud-provider based security breaches"?

Re:Good for them!

[MightyMartian]

And what happens when some unsigned index counter wraps around and the database gets corrupted? At some point even the best written software needs bug fixes.

Re:Good for them!

[Khyber]

"cloud-provider based security breaches"

CloudFront has almost no security, so websites using their stuff for a CDN get their artwork ripped all the time.

Re: Good for them!

[John Allsup]

Using virtualisation and a VPN at the hypervisor level, you can present an unencrypted network to the DOS software which is secure and encrypted when viewed from outside. MS-style EOL tactics should be outlawed in health software. Patients lives are more important than making money. If SA Health has a perfectly funtional system, the original vendor should be required to make their software maintainable past any business motivated EOL. That is the big problem with proprietary solutions.

Re:Good for them!

[uberbrainchild8437]

What? Artwork? I can copy artwork with the camera on my phone, customer data is totally different from data delivered via a CDN service. Using a CDN is not really going to make a difference security wise, if anything it makes it harder to secure and keep track of all the different parts.

Re: Good for them!

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't live their lives by "what ifs". You should stop doing so as well.

Re: Good for them!

[fustakrakich]

the original vendor should be required to make their software maintainable past any business motivated EOL.

The only way to do that is to revoke their copyright privileges so that somebody else can maintain it if they don't want to. *End of life* should mean end of copyright protections. Let's get a ballot referendum on it.

Re:Good for them!

[Gadget_Guy]

And what happens when some unsigned index counter wraps around and the database gets corrupted?

Given the age of the software, it wouldn't surprise me if they used a common database format where the structure can be interrogated by SA Health's IT department. They have probably already looked for problems like that. I would also think that they have probably found all the bugs that they are going to find from some 30 year old software.

I think that it is fairly safe to keep using this until EPAS is rolled out either later this year or the next. It's not like they are going to try to keep using this software until 2038 when the next Y2K will happen. (OK, not really - and that's a *nix issue anyway)

Re: Good for them!

[peragrin]

Company's consider copyright and patents to be property. So the government should just use eminent domain and seize it in the interests of national security.

Do that a couple of times and companies will start changing.

Re: Good for them!

[Falconhell]

They are a govt department not a business.

Re:Good for them!

[tsotha]

I would also bet it's more risky - back in the MS-DOS days only governments worried about security desktop machines. There are probably all sorts of holes that would be considered security malpractice today. The only way to even sort-of secure it would be to have it running on VMs off it its own little world.

I worked for the US DoD as a contractor. When faced with the same situation (a program running on, of all things, Microsoft Xenix) we bought, not just a license, but the program itself including source code. Of course, part of the deal was the end of support from the vendor.

Re:Good for them!

[tsotha]

You'd think by now that kind of stuff would have been worked out of the system.

Re:Good for them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that but being DOS-based and hence single-tasking, it's likely to be more stable too.

People, especially the millennials, need to get it out of their head that newer is always better. It's not. If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Re: Good for them!

[hackwrench]

It may or may not be more safe, but when are we going to get to the point where clients can make decisions about their health using information from their doctor online. I have doctors from the same company and they struggle to share information on their network. Forget about me.

Re: Good for them!

[hackwrench]

People live by what ifs all the time, what if I eat this or that for lunch, what if I go with this service or goods provider or that one?

Re:Good for them!

[dbIII]

And what happens when some unsigned index counter wraps around and the database gets corrupted? At some point even the best written software needs bug fixes.

Then you restore from backup.
Do you really think they have used this software for decades without some problem forcing that already?

One important factor not mentioned in the article is that IBM seriously fucked over the Australian state of Queensland over a failed software migration for the health department there and the cost blowout was enough for it to be the major factor for a lot of people in politics to lose their jobs. People in politics care about their own jobs more than anything else. Until a few years have passed expect Australian politicians to refuse to allow changes with software whether it makes any sense to do so or not.

On another note government departments or government owned corporations (worst of both worlds) are used to forcing software companies to do their bidding. When the government owned the Australian telephone company, Testra, they wanted to put more than 32728 MS Windows workstations on a single MS Windows Domain (yes I know that is a pretty fucking insane policy long before it hit that hard ceiling, and also kids that's another good example of where using a signed integer is insane in the first place). That was one of the reasons Microsoft moved to Active Directory and allowed such things. They are used to bossing major vendors around even if it means getting something that makes little or no sense.

Re:Good for them!

[Macfox]

Except it's not DOS based. Dumb journo's see unix terminal app = DOS. It runs on SunOS FWIW.

Re:Good for them!

[sr180]

Dont rely on our Health Department to do anything sensible.

We are currently building a hospital in a city of 1.6 million people - which is to be the 3rd most expensive building in the world. Its more expensive than the Burj Khalifa.
Even worse - we are doing it as a public private partnership. So instead of simply borrowing money (in an age where money is almost free) at a government level, we are paying a private enterprise to do that, and we essentially lease it off them for the next 30 years. They make a massive profit, we incur all the costs.

Re:Good for them!

[arglebargle_xiv]

We are currently building a hospital in a city of 1.6 million people - which is to be the 3rd most expensive building in the world. Its more expensive than the Burj Khalifa.

Why do you think they're still using DOS-based software in SA? It's to pay for RAH...

Re:Good for them!

[jrumney]

It's not just a *nix issue, every standards compliant C library needs to use a time_t based at the POSIX epoch, and a lot of those are using 32 bit signed int too, including probably 1990s era Borland and Watcom compilers for DOS.

Re: Good for them!

[chihowa]

The expiration of copyright on a compiled work doesn't make the work easily maintainable. The source code is likely not even protected under copyright because it was never published. It's a trade secret and will survive copyright expiration and (without specific intervention) even the death of the company.

Re: Good for them!

[fustakrakich]

The expiration of copyright on a compiled work doesn't make the work easily maintainable.

Easier than the present circumstance. All legal prohibitions against working on and distributing it are removed. That's a big step.

Re: Good for them!

[cthulhu11]

If it even still exists

Copyright terms

[currently_awake]

The purpose of copyright is to allow authors to make money on their creativity. When they stop doing that it should go into the public domain. All abandonware should be public domain.

stuff that matters?

[Yurka]

A prominent author refuses to stop using a typewriter, even though the warranty on it had expired and the manufacturer no longer makes them.
A misguided luddite refuses to stop using a 1950s Packard, even though the company that produced it no longer exists.
A world-renowned musician refuses to stop using his Stradivarius, even though...

Re:stuff that matters?

[ADRA]

All your points are irrelevant to issues in the story, but thanks for playing.

Thinkgs that are important:
1. A critical'ish health system is being run on a system unsupported by a vendor
2. Said software is LICENSED
3. Said vendor can't find people willing to support maintaining the product so they discontinued it and leave no legal venue to continue operating said software
4. The cost and timeline of an upgrade now (they should seriously consider it regardless) would cripple their health infrastructure. We're talking 3-5 years minimum of conversion time

The question really comes down to: If said vendor abandoned service for a cirtical health tool, does public safety (health care) take precidence over copyright law, and if so, should there be renumeration for the copyright 'losers' in cases where it occurs.

Re:stuff that matters?

[mark-t]

4. The cost and timeline of an upgrade now (they should seriously consider it regardless) would cripple their health infrastructure. We're talking 3-5 years minimum of conversion time

Which suggests that the government should have been actually planning for this at least three to five years ago. While I think it's assinine for a company to sue for using unlicensed software when they won't sell a license in the first place, I think that the government is in the wrong here.

For all practical purposes, however, any penalties owed for using the unlicensed software can be viewed as the costs of "renewing" the license until they *can* get an upgrade implemented. They better get on that pretty quickly, however... since said "renewal" is going to get pretty darn expensive really fast, and dragging their heels on it will only make things worse.

Re:stuff that matters?

[Gadget_Guy]

Which suggests that the government should have been actually planning for this at least three to five years ago. While I think it's assinine for a company to sue for using unlicensed software when they won't sell a license in the first place, I think that the government is in the wrong here.

The government is in the wrong, but not because they haven't planned ahead. They started shopping around for a new system in 2010, but they have had problems with the web-based solution and so have put the roll-out on hold. Only a few city hospitals have started using the new EPAS system. It will be later this year or (as I suspect) some time next year before the country hospitals finally get migrated to the new, centralised solution. Only then will they be able to kick Chiron to the curb.

Re:stuff that matters?

[dbIII]

You have it mixed up.
It's about being allowed to use the software. It's not about support.
The vendor is refusing to licence the software and pulling the rug out from under the client telling them to stop using it.
How about discussing that instead of wandering off into the wilds?

Re:stuff that matters?

[dbIII]

Another poster seeing it as a person! Most of the people who were there in 2010 would have moved on.
I had the misfortune of working for a government owned body a couple of times. Every year there was a major "re-org", change of direction, and new slogans. If a middle manager was in the same post for two years they would consider their career over and resign to work elsewhere.

Sell them the source, what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a product that works for them. The publisher doesn't want to maintain it. So let them purchase the source. I really don't see a problem here.

Re:Sell them the source, what's the problem?

[pz]

The publisher wants to sell them the most newest super-duperest shiniest version instead. One that the user does not want.

I'd love to see the Australian courts force the publisher to sell the user the source code in lieu of a final license extension.

Leasing core software sure is silly. Planned to re

[raymorris]

Switching can sure be a pain for types of software, if it's the center of your enterprise. It sure is silly to lease that kind of software for a few years rather than but (or build) it.

Of course, the article says they choose to lease because from the very beginning they planned to replace it. So the plan all along was that they would replace it, but now they decided they'd rather not. That kinda sucks, but when you can't make up your mind, can't make a decision, you sometimes end up an inconvenient position.

You can keep Windows 7, did ask for short lease

[raymorris]

You CAN keep using Windows 7, for as ling as you want. The standard license for software is indefinite. South Australia planned to replace this software after something else was available, so they chose to lease a short term solution. Now they changed their mind and wish they had bought a regular software license instead.

Re:You can keep Windows 7, did ask for short lease

[NoMaster]

South Australia planned to replace this software after something else was available, so they chose to lease a short term solution. Now they changed their mind and wish they had bought a regular software license instead.

As somebody else has since pointed out up above, you've got that almost exactly wrong...

Because they ASKED FOR, paid for, short term lease

[raymorris]

South Australia had orignially planned for this to be a short term solution until a replacement was ready. So they found somebody willing to do the lease they wanted, rather than a standard perpetual license. They figured they would save money that way, since they weren't going to use it very long.

Then they changed their mind. They wanted a lease. They paid for a lease until March. That's why they should have it until March.

Most software isn't leased. Sth Aus wanted a lease

[raymorris]

> I hate this model as much as you do, but that's how software licensing works.

I don't use any software that has a time-limited, leased license. Do you?

That's not "how software licensing works", it's what South Australia wanted because they had planned to replace the software when the other software was ready. Then they changed their mind and now they wish they had purchased a regular perpetual license rather than trying to save money by leasing it.

What's in this for ...

[CaptainDork]

... Working Systems?

They don't give a fuck about patient safety. They are a money-making enterprise. So, what's their motivation?

That's the question.

Re:What's in this for ...

[guruevi]

Making money... Duh. They want to sell new systems and their contract states they should've stopped using this package by now. They are completely free to go with another vendor or do it themselves, but this vendor wants their money. Regardless of whether or what they want to replace, it is mostly irrelevant, the vendor has stated that for renewal of the contract it will cost A$x and the hospital system doesn't want to pay it. The "cost" of software is not just a license cost, it is also maintenance and upgrades.

They decided to go with a closed source, locked in, short term license, the cost is whatever the company decides for you. If they want you to upgrade, you should've known that they can make you do that. The alternative is stop using "their" software and next decision you make, make sure it's "your" software.

Re:FIRST!!!!

[Jiro]

Source code has to be vetted first before it's released by a big company. And vetting costs money. What if the source code contains third party code that they are not permitted to release to others? What if it contains comments that are libellous?

And what if they sell the source code and then the recipient doesn't know how to compile it? The recipient won't buy "source code with no guarantee you can compile it" but if there *is* a guarantee that they compile it, that means that the company has committed itself to supporting something they want to stop supporting.

What is stopping them....

[mark-t]

.... from just continuing to use it while paying the penalties for using an unlicensed version of their software? I mean for at least the interim, until they can get an upgrade firmly in place?

Re:Don't hire webdevs to write real software ...

[ColdWetDog]

If it's any consolation, that sounds suspiciously like our current EHR.

I'd gladly develop something better for them

[etinin]

Really, for less than it costs to maintain this legacy crap, my team would be willing to develop something decent for them. (and give them the sourcr) This is all really stupid.

This is good news

[product_bucket]

I'd rather hear this kind of news than news about how they got hacked/doxxed/cryptolocker'd, etc. This news is excellent, because it shows the system still works.

Support staff

[smaugy]

I bet they only had one employee supporting this app - the original developer - and he either died or left the company, so they probably can't actually support it because they no longer know how to.

Or maybe someone accidentally turned off the old server that nobody dared to touch & it wouldn't turn back on again.

They might not have any choice but to sue.

Hmm

[Greyfox]

Could they fund an open source replacement for it? They're probably spending a lot of money keeping the old thing alive, they'd probably also have to spend a lot of money to migrate to the new software. So why not roll that money into an open development effort and make the resulting code freely available to everyone?

Re:Because they ASKED FOR, paid for, short term le

[AchilleTalon]

In short, the IT department at SA Health is run by a bunch of f... morons.

Re:Most software isn't leased. Sth Aus wanted a le

[ArchieBunker]

I use Solid Works and Altium nearly every day at my job. Both of those are yearly licenses.

640K ought to be enough for anybody

[jfdavis668]

Hey, it was good enough for Bill Gates, it should work for a hospital system.

Re:Ethics

[HiThere]

Businesses, by your definition, should not be supported by society.

Businesses by a more reasonable definition deserve support. If the business is good for society, then the business deserves support. If not, not. The laws should be so written, and used to be before bribing the legislators became so popular. Originally a corporation to be allowed a charter had to convince the government issuing the charter that it would be socially beneficial. Some charters were only for a limited amount of time anyway. I believe that Louisiana still has on its books a provision allowing a corporate charter to be revoked for being damaging to society. I've never heard of it being used, but it's still there as far as I know.

In the US the turning point was around the time of the Civil War (the 1860's) when it became legal to lobby Congressional representatives. I'm not sure of the exact date, but plus or minus a decade, and that was just a point of inflection, the trend had been increasing probably since the 1780's. And before then the Constitution didn't exist...but it started before the Constitution, though probably not before independence, as prior to that the power was in London.

This is just an example of the general principle that those who are powerful will look for ways to make themselves more powerful. And the operation of this principle is not always nefarious...it just tends to be so.

Re:It's not supported so its dangerous

[HiThere]

You've got a lot of trust in "supported". I've more than once run into problems that were marked "won't fix". Working software in a stable environment is more likely to break if it receives "support changes" then if it doesn't. You do need to guard it against intrusions, but this is MSDOS software, so presumably it doesn't permit networked access. And presumably it's being run in a virtual environment that also doesn't permit networked access to its internals.

You are the government

[iamacat]

Pass the law that any software which is no longer sold at price comparable to what it went for at it's prime is public domain and anyone is entitled to hack it and bypass any anti-copying measures. Many instant wins, no downside to speak of:

• Production systems are not disturbed by upgrades they don't need
• Reliable, legal ways to enjoy old games
• New versions of software have to actually be superior to old versions for majority of user base to sell.

Re:You are the government

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, you clearly have no idea who the government is. It got into power destroying the all fibre network and paying twice as much to re-aquire degraded copper (site unseen) while claiming it was cheaper, faster, better. Think about that, the only developed country in the world BUYING and laying copper infrastructure at twice the cost of fibre. They recently sent the feds after the company they founded to handle this project because the leaks kept reporting how expensive and outdated the infrastructure was, so obviously that required federal police to shut down such talks. That alone deserves them a gaol sentence. They also got into power yelling the sky was falling and we were on the brink of economic ruin (yep, twice as expensive project in a "dire economic crash caused by the left leaning poor lovers party") despite what all the economic agencies responded with.

Sadly this party keeps getting into power, somehow keeping this belief among many fools they are the best economic managers (none of their treasurers ever won an award, while the other party has had I believe two world class economic leaders). One reason I am against everyone voting, if we have enough morons to not bother simple fact checks, to keep voting in a party that wastes billions of dollars in the belief of trickle down economics, well...

*there is an election coming up, their plan? Give businesses a tax cut in the midst of all this tax evasion (Apple and Google fuck us hard) and, wait for it.. Giving business a 5% tax cut will magically make them pay all their tax (Apple and Google will start paying billions in taxes) and make them invest more in Australia. That is on their economic plan, seriously you can't make this shit up. It'll cost us roughly $50 billion which they are likely planning to use to cut social services as they always try to do. For some reason having the world's most targeted welfare system is still a disgrace.

Re:You are the government

[cammoblammo]

The NBN has been cocked up by the (Liberal) federal government. This is a (Labor) state government matter.

You're partly right though---copyright law is a federal matter and the SA government couldn't pass this law if they wanted to.

"A software" --? Huh?

[jabberw0k]

What is "a software"? Is that like "an information" or "a hardware"? Ugh.

Re:Leasing core software sure is silly. Planned to

[Gadget_Guy]

Of course, the article says they choose to lease because from the very beginning they planned to replace it. So the plan all along was that they would replace it, but now they decided they'd rather not.

No, you have misread the article (and mixed up choose and chose). I presume that you were referring to this paragraph:

Chiron, an MS-DOS-based system first developed in the 1980s and rolled out in many SA Health rural hospitals in the early 90s, was to have been replaced by the Enterprise Patient Administration System (EPAS) from Allscripts that was originally planned as a state-wide EMR and PAS solution.

The part about when the software was introduced was a subclause of the sentence, and it did not mean that it was already planned to be superseded even as it was introduced. In fact, the software was implemented over 2 years from 1991, while EPAS was only planned in 2009 and put out to tender in 2010. This was many years after they had refused to upgrade to the Windows replacement of Chiron, which itself happened 12 years after SA Health first started using it. The roll-out of EPAS was supposed to have been completed by 2017, 26 years after they first signed up to Chiron. This was not a short term solution as you have stated elsewhere.

Re:FreeDOS is still supported

[negRo_slim]

Who cares if the employees hate it? If it works, it works.

Re:Because they ASKED FOR, paid for, short term le

[Rockoon]

In short, the IT department at SA Health is run by a bunch of f... morons.

..unless the courts rule in their favor, then they are geniuses.

I view this thing as similar to someone that opts to subscribe to say Photoshop rather than purchase it outright because they figure it would be cheaper, and then cryng foul later when Adobe only offers subscription and purchase options for a newer version.

It shouldnt matter that the older version still works for you. You didnt choose the buy it option, you chose the lease option. But in this case its "OMG medical software!!" so maybe they can twist the courts into making a really fucked up decision.

Re: Prevents Cylons

[NormalVisual]

I've used both token ring and Ethernet attached DOS machines.

Don't forget ARCnet!

I hope you can switch, you know it's annual

[raymorris]

Since you (or your business) selected software with a one-year license, which may or may not be available again next year, I hope there is a plan for when you need to switch. Personally I like to ensure that at least the data is in an accessible format, so that it CAN be imported into other software. I strongly prefer open source software, so I can keep using the same software (even maintaining it if required). Sometimes closed-source might make more sense, though.

Re:I hope you can switch, you know it's annual

[dbIII]

Since you (or your business) selected software with a one-year license

There is a LOT of it about.

Re:Because they ASKED FOR, paid for, short term le

[ruir]

I would say they tend to be info phobic when it comes to Australia. I remember pretty well the jobs adverts being for novell well when I was using Linux for some at least a decade, and many people being into Windows 2k in the rest of the world.

Version Changes vs Upgrades?

[kenwd0elq]

DOS-based programs probably don't have so many of the GUI-security flaws, and I've seen DOS-based programs run rings around their Windoze brethren.

Also, it's likely that the newer versions have substantially different database designs and requirements, and it would probably take months or years in effort to convert the existing data to the new version.

Change for the sake of change isn't always "progress".

Re:Version Changes vs Upgrades?

[ChunderDownunder]

"months or years in effort"

By this point Working Systems/Global Health have long ago migrated every other customer to their Windows product and new backend. So it should have been a *relatively* smooth transition given that the vendor has done a number of migrations previously and thus ironed out most of the kinks.

The issue seems to be that they rejected that option and decided to put out a tender and go with a different vendor. In which they will cause themselves migration heartache by not going with the specified upgrade path.

Backwards

[AbRASiON]

The whole state is frequently the most backwards in many ways. Want to know where the source of the majority of the anti-video game bills for Australia come from?
Adelaide "city of churches", indeed.

Re:Most software isn't leased. Sth Aus wanted a le

[im_thatoneguy]

Then they changed their mind and now they wish they had purchased a regular perpetual license rather than trying to save money by leasing it.

Yeah, this sounds to me like the heart of it. If you lease a car year-to-year you might pay less than owning it. The company effectively is trying to end the lease and reclaim the vehicle but the company wants to keep it without making any more payments.

From the vendor's perspective probably what the Health Department has been paying for, for the last 20 odd years is support costs while receiving the software for "Free". Now they want to get the software without a support contract. So arguably they've paid the metaphorical depreciation but they've made no payments towards capital. This lawsuit will most likely just be used as leverage to demand a large software license fee and a clear contract that excludes them from liability should this unsupported product die. Even then, I would be wary of "selling a license" as well since there is the potential for a massive hack resulting in government inquiries and bad publicity for "insecure software" being associated with your company.

NOT MS-DOS

[sc0ob5]

CHIRON is not MS-DOS based, It runs on SunOS and is delivered by a terminal session.

There are a number of other old patient administration systems (all UNIX based, mostly SunOS but OpenVMS as well, all delivered by terminal session) that are in use currently and hospitals that use them are being migrated to the new single system but it's a slow process as the new system does more than just patient administration, it replaces a number of other old systems as well.

So that it's MS-DOS based is just plain wrong.

I don't want to get into the licensing issues with Working Systems.

How do I know this? I work for the department..

Re:NOT MS-DOS

[sc0ob5]

Also the summary is incorrect, there are 64 sites that use CHIRON in the state and they are all regional sites with low numbers of presentations. There are 11 metropolitan sites (plus their satellite sites) that use either the updated system or another old legacy UNIX system that is in-line for replacement with the new system.

Re:Leasing core software sure is silly. Planned to

[dbIII]

Switching can sure be a pain for types of software, if it's the center of your enterprise. It sure is silly to lease that kind of software for a few years rather than but (or build) it.

Of course, the article says they choose to lease because from the very beginning they planned to replace it. So the plan all along was that they would replace it, but now they decided they'd rather not. That kinda sucks, but when you can't make up your mind, can't make a decision, you sometimes end up an inconvenient position.

The above strange attitude is common so I will not call you an idiot just someone who has falling for a common trap.
Corporations and other orgs are not people FFS!
It's not that they have a mind to change.
As management and staff change directions also change.

Do you really think the same people are still there as were in the place thirty years ago? I'd say not, it doesn't look like you've thought about it an any depth and have just fallen into the trap of thinking of an org as a person with a will of it's own. That sort of thinking can only lead to confusion, disappointment and possibly getting utterly fucked over by unexpected change.

Been there done that

[dbIII]

Been there done that - plenty of vendors issue a permanent licence to their clients in the final year of support so that the "security" software will let the software start up. It typically comes with a contract that says you can continue to use the software with no support and no legal recourse if the software has or causes any sort of problem. My workplace has a few bits of legacy software occasionally used that fit that category.
Sometimes it's easier to make a minor tweak to some data from the 1990s in the same program used at the time instead of the time consuming and sometimes lossy process of converting the data into a different format. Another is just due to the users wanting monospaced fonts in the plotter output (or a PDF of the same via a virtual plotter) which was not available on any version beyond 2000. There are plenty of reasons to use something that works especially if currently available software produces different results.

Re:Because they ASKED FOR, paid for, short term le

[dbIII]

The same morons for THIRTY YEARS?
Unlike you I'm not going to call yourself or raymorris morons but you clearly have not put any thought into this before posting.

I'm in a small place unlike that S.A. government department but I'd still get annoyed if someone blamed me for some of the ignorant and stupid choices that were made in my workplace before I started working there and cleaned them up. If I was in a very large place like a S.A. government department I wouldn't like to be called a moron for failing to get enough of a budget to do a major migration lasting years away from a platform that may have made sense long ago but does not now. A moron is something else.

Re:It's south Australia... That says everything

[cammoblammo]

South Australia is not a town. Just sayin'.

I don't see a problem here

[Centurix]

It's still the 90's in South Australia.

Pleading the First about petitioning the govt

[tepples]

In the US the turning point was around the time of the Civil War (the 1860's) when it became legal to lobby Congressional representatives. I'm not sure of the exact date

Official recognition of the right of the people of the United States "to petition the government for a redress of grievances" was ratified in December 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. A "lobbyist" is just someone whom people hire "to petition the government" on their behalf.

Re:Pleading the First about petitioning the govt

[HiThere]

Look up the history of the word "lobbyist". It refers to petitioning the congressman in the lobby of the Capitol building. This was a great advantage to those who could afford to hire someone to do that. The word now has a more general meaning than it did originally, but I was referring to (what I understand) to be the original meaning. And this change in the rules happened within a decade of 1860.

A simple question: does it work?

[whitroth]

I mean, does it, or does it not, still do the job they need it to do? Is there something that's a show-stopper that they absolutely *have* to have, and so need to upgrade.

And they *can* always run it under wine on a real operating system....

                        mark