Re: [MI400] Retreive Source an MI program -- Source Escrow

["Mark Waterbury" <mark.s.waterbury@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Leif (and everyone else):

For source escrow, I was thinking about commercial software
products costing perhaps $50K or $100K, vs. the $5,000 variety...

The legal costs of putting together an escrow agreement, plus the
costs of paying an escrow agent to maintain the source code could
simply be "prohibitive" for small products and utilities or tools in the
under $10K price range...

>From a "business continuity" perspective, it is not likely that the
sudden lack of support for an under $10,000 utility or tool will
cause grave and irreparable harm to most businesses, while the
sudden lack of support for a "mission-critical" ERP system might
cause serious problems.  (Hence the need for escrow agreements.)

With regard to OfficeVision/400, and other products that IBM
has decided (for whatever reasons) to withdraw from marketing,
I have proposed to several IBMers from Rochester and ToroLabs
that IBM should place all source code for all withdrawn products
in an "open source" status, so that customers who depend on those
products can elect to pick up the source code and carry on, by just
maintaining the products for themselves...

Since, (I hope) IBM is not likely to go "belly up" any time soon,
it seems this would be perhaps a very reasonable alternative, for
IBM LPPs, since IBM can withdraw them from marketing at any
time, and for any reason.

Any comments?  Suggestions?

Mark S. Waterbury

----- Original Message -----
From: "Leif Svalgaard" <leif@leif.org>
To: <mi400@midrange.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 9:05 PM
Subject: Re: [MI400] Retreive Source an MI program


> and if I license some program from IBM? e.g. OS/400?
> Give me whole source or no license...
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Don <dr2@cssas400.com>
> To: <mi400@midrange.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 10:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [MI400] Retreive Source an MI program
>
> > No, you should have insisted on getting the whole source or no contract.
> >
> > Source escrow, imho, is a very risky proposition...