RE: Having much trouble working with our ERP vendor

I remember reading eons ago that IBM-compatible PC's became possible when Phoenix developed a BIOS (IIRC the only part of the original IBM PC tent protected). But in order to not infringe on patents, copyrights, etc., it was developed in a "clean room" from scratch.

That said, I used to work for a software vendor (years ago). We had a general ledger package (among other things). Now G/L is pretty simple at its core; it was the "nice" little features/reports that gave it value. But I could design and program a G/L application without infringing upon any of their copyrights, I think, even if the "look and feel" were similar - as long as I did it without using any of their code or documentation (which I don't have, anyway). But I'm no lawyer.

Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
--
B&W Wholesale
office: 615-995-7024
email: jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And what is more, I agree with everything I have just said. - Piet Koornhoff, South African ambassador to the U.S.


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bill
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 1:42 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Having much trouble working with our ERP vendor

Don Cavaiani wrote:

We cannot seem to work out a mutually beneficial way to move our ERP software up to a new IBM Systemi Server.
If I understand correctly, NOT licensing our ERP software on the faster IBM server models will render all the vendor programs run from the standard vendor ERP menus unusable.
We have for years now been modifying a large percentage (40-50%) of these ERP programs (modifications have been made to the original RPG source code). In addition, we have developed several major 'bolt-ons' - using just the existing file structures and LANSA for the WEB. We are investigating the possibility of dropping all the ERP menus and programs entirely, if/when moving to the new server.
I am asking the group for a 'reasonableness' check on the possibility of this approach.

I don't see it coming to fruition. Modifying a program doesn't remove
the licensing restrictions that would be in place. Creating new as a
substitute would likely be ok, but I don't think you'd ever convince
anyone that -none- of the logic contained therein was obtained by
analysis of the licensed programs.

Also, the license check for the ERP package you are referring to is also
embedded in many sections of code and not just the menuing interface. I
hope your company doesn't go down the road where you spend millions to
save hundreds of thousands.

Bill