Looking to purchase a legal license of Powerbuilder 12.1

[LicensingMaven]

All,

I am a PM involved in a divestiture. The business applications are 30+ years old, built in Powerbuilder 12.1. In order to be compliant (according to the seller), I have to purchase a legal license of 12.1 Does anyone have a license they no longer need that we can purchase. Please advise.

 

[mbalent]

12.1 was put out by Sybase which was acquired by SAP back in 2011(?). Current development of PowerBuilder is done by Appeon Corp. You may wish to post this on the Appeon Community board. Go to Appeon.com.

Matt

"Nature forges everything on the anvil of time"

http://www.anvil-of-time.com

 

[LicensingMaven]

Hi.

Sadly, I'm familiar (intimately) with the path from Sybase to Appeon. As I mentioned in the original, these systems are ancient and would have to go through recoding to work with Appeon's 2019 version. We don't have time within the next 6 weeks to get that done before moving these dinosaurs. I NEED a legal 12.1 license. What I'm looking for is if anyone in the community has a 12.1 license they no longer use that they are willing (and able) to part with. After cutover, we can upgrade, but for the moment, we are somewhat stuck.

 

[Roland Smith]

I am pretty sure that legally the Sybase license is non-transferrable. SAP is no longer selling licenses for PB 12.x.

Why couldn't ownership of the PowerBuilder licenses be transferred along with ownership of the application source code? If they are getting rid of the PowerBuilder application, they would have no use for the PowerBuilder licenses.

 

[LicensingMaven]

I would love to get a transfer, but the seller will continue to use PB12.1 to support the applications they’re still using. That is the frustration. We’ve even asked SAP and Appeon to provide a letter stating that there is no legal authority that would pursue non-compliance. Neither will claim ownership, so neither will provide the letter. It is by far the most frustrating license pursuit of my career. The seller is absolutely rigid about this. We’ve even purchased 2019, but obviously that license can not be applied to 12.x.

 

[Roland Smith]

The license only applies to the development environment, not the applications. You could convert your development staff to PB 2019 and keep the end users on the current 12.1 application until you are ready to release the new version.

Where I work we are moving from 12.5 to 2019. We haven't run into any difficulties with the conversion. The only thing of note was that the pbtheme190.dll and pbjson190.dll files must be deployed with the apps even if the new Themes feature isn't being used.

 

[LicensingMaven]

I’m obviously not communicating clearly why we are stuck. We are in the middle of a divestiture. To minimize risk, we cannot change anything until we have ownership of the systems. In three months, we can convert to PB2019 without issue. However, in order to divest, we have to move as-is and use PB12.x to rebrand and change paths. That’s it. The seller has drawn this frustrating line in the sand that we can’t have the source code until we are legally licensed or until a valid authority says they are not culpable for noncompliance.

***bang head here*** You can see why I am utterly confounded by this problem, I’m sure. For 3 months, this shouldn't even be a thing.

 

[Roland Smith]

Can the seller issue the rebranded application for you?

If not, what if a consulting company with a legal copy of PowerBuilder were allowed to take temporary control of the source and issue the rebranded application for you. Then after getting the go ahead from the seller, they could convert it to 2019 for you and send you the code. The source would be 'in escrow' legally. It would be cheaper than buying a copy of PowerBuilder 12.1 if it were available. I know someone who would do it.

 

[LicensingMaven]

We have a vendor doing just that. But again, we cannot change anything (including the branding) until we own the data and source code. It is a catch 22. We can't change anything without PB12.x before go-live, we can't get a legal copy of PB12.x. Alas, I'm down to pursuing some kind of legal air cover.

 

[zulmach]

hi, how are your divesting going