Software Laws??

[NFLDUser]

Not sure if this is the right forum...

A friend of mine owns a business and he purchased a desktop software package with a local DB. Since then, he's paid regular support/upgrade costs. Now, he wants to make a switch to another software but when he called the existing vendor, they said that as soon as the support time period runs out (end of July), the software will shut down and he will be unable to even ACCESS his data through this program.

Is this legal? I'd tend to think that it's HIS data.

Thoughts?

 

[JCreamerII]

NFLDUser,

You have to read the fine print on the license agreement. Most of them have so many exclusions in them that they aren't liable for anything. You may be able to access the data thru a third party tool, but that may not have the functionality to be much good with out the program interface. A lot of programs from independent programming shops have a drop dead date coded into their programs for a number of reasons, not paying maintenance fees would be be of them. You have to look at the underlining data to decide if it has any value, and what you can do with it going forward. I doubt they are doing anything illegal it's just business as usual.

Thanks,

Jim C.

 

[SQLSister]

I'm assuming this is business critical data? If I were him I would make sure to make a printed copy of all the data before the support runs out. Also, it may be possible to export some of the data right now to excel or a csv file or a txt file or some other type file for reporting purposes. He should check his documentation for how to export data. Possibly he can salvage a lot of his data by doing this.

If the database is currently accessible, he could create a second database with the same tables and copy the data to those tables. This data would then not be locked out as he created the db himself. However with this kind of attitude on the provider's part, I would be suprised if he can directly access the tables.

Next option is to negotiate (and pay for) support for less than the next year to give him time to convert to the new system. He might even pay consulting fees to the company to help convert the data. Yes it's miserable to have to do that, but when the alternative is losing business critical data, it could be much cheaper than recreating the data from scratch.

Whatever happens I presume he will be telling everyone he knows not to use this company's software, so it is in their long-term best interest to try to help accomodate his need to switch to a new program. Unfortunately, there are some pretty unethical companies out there who don't care if they get bad word of mouth.



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[Hap007]

Dear NFLDUser,

I agree with what others have already stated here, your friend needs to read the agreement very closely.

Even if the vendor is breaking the law, by the time it goes through the courts, it could be years. Will your friend's business survive that time period being down?

Bottom line, he needs a new vendor and software package ASAP.

Then get that data out of the old system some how.

Good news, at least he (vendor) gave you a warning.

I would isolate that PC, take it off the internet, and not let the computer system date go beyond mid July.

That way, you can at least run the program so you/he can extract or report on the historical data.

Good Luck,
Hap...



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