Radoslaw Skorupka wrote: >Rick Fochtman pisze: >> Disabling your own software after a certain date is one thing; unpleasant but not unheard of. Disabling the whole shop is HIGHLY UNETHICAL and should be condemned with all possible vigor.
>Unethical - sure. Unlawful? Not necessarily. And can be hard to prove. Agreed 100% >BTW: A programmer I know, used to put "time bombs" into program. The bombs were deleted after he got money for his job. He considered it as some kind of insurance. Is it unethical? Yes, but it was an weapon against unethical employers. Good weapon. I have no problem with that as long as all parties were warned about the potential upcoming disruption. In the days of good ole DOS, when my friends and I were working privately writing systems for paying clients, we *warned in writing* these paying clients BEFORE we commit our time to write the systems, that we will build in two time bombs in our software which can be de-activated by paying a deposito and then a full payment. Of course we don't use the words 'time bomb', but each time the system start up, a warning ticker is shown. After the elapsed time the system flatly refused to start while waiting for a password to be given when the payment was done. Anyway - no client ever has a problem with that, actually they are glad to be reminded of their duty. It is a case of struggling against unethical customers who flatly refuse to pay. Another form of 'time bomb': A programmer I know was busy installing some software. He moved on to another employer. While preparing to move, he just stopped the installation process citing 'too busy' as a lame excuse. In the end the 'old' employer had to hire expensive consultants to complete installation. Here we got a case of unethical employee, not employer. So even in computer related work, you get rotten apples. Think atternoys, panelbeaters, second hand car dealers, etc. ;-D Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht PS: no unethical persons were harmed while writing this post... ;-D ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
