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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.
SA Health has 64 sites across South Australia -- all of which are apparently still using the MS-DOS-based health software from the 1990s.
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.
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.
"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.
They've probably paid the development cost 10 times over by now ...
This is why open source folks. Software vendors are assholes.
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.
Achille Talon
Hop!
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.
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.
Fuck them! Keep using it!
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.
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.
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!
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.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
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.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
It works for Oracle...
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
"I decided I could write something better than everything out there in two weeks. And I was right." - Linus Torvalds
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.
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.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Eminent domain. Works for land, it can work for copyrights and patents. And yes, American courts have done so.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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:
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:
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.
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!
Careful what you wish for.
"His name was James Damore."
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..