> how does your scenario differ from hiring a new programmer and telling him
he has to support an application that has been around for years
Obviously we could invent hypothetical scenarios which were the same or
different. I think it is at least plausible that in your scenario there
would be some documentation and appropriate tools such as compilers, and
perhaps in-house skills. ("Your" scenario application is written in COBOL
and the shop has COBOL programmers; the escrowed application is written in
FORTRAN and there are no FORTRAN skills in-house.) But Yes, best case, your
scenario is similar to identical. But of course there is no preceding
drawn-out court fight and hopefully no crisis (unlike "it blew up and we
finally figured out the vendor is out of business").
> they were taken to court by a competitor, and the competitor won the case
Interesting. The competitor must have been a licensee, with an escrow
agreement, and the vendor must have breached the support agreement. Unusual
to say the least.
> bankruptcy is typically financially oriented. Contract language for
"real" property ...
Bankruptcy is bankruptcy. Software is intellectual property. Bankruptcy
basically trumps contracts. If I were a creditor of a bankrupt software
company I would be in court arguing that the source code should be sold to
the highest bidder to help satisfy the software company's debts to me and
others, not given away due to an executory agreement. What would the court
say? We would be paying lawyers to find out, wouldn't we? (Meanwhile, the
poor customer's critical processing is still waiting on a bug fix.)
Escrow may work in certain circumstances. I think it is problematic to the
point of having little benefit. Your mileage may vary.
Charles
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Mitch
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2014 5:12 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Vendor Source Code
Charles,
My first question is this: how does your scenario differ from hiring a new
programmer and telling him he has to support an application that has been
around for years, but none of the previous developers or support staff are
with the company any longer? However, your point about what happens if and
when you do have to get access to the code from a no longer existent vendor.
This is true, but also I would be surprised if any company would put
something into a production environment without first testing it, whether it
is if the vendor product "blows up" or something changes in the client's
environment.
I represented a vendor (who shall remain unnamed) and a situation happened
where they had their product code in escrow, they were taken to court by a
competitor, and the competitor won the case. The vendor then had to make
their current version of their product available as per contract. A end
user organization should ensure that any escrowed source is always the
latest version as per contract stipulations.
Lastly, bankruptcy is typically financially oriented. Contract language for
"real" property is handled differently than financial obligations. Again,
I, unfortunately, learned this first hand. BTW, IMHO, any vendor that is
worth their salt will keep their various versions held in escrow up to
date.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
