If someone violates a copyright, there are legal and I think criminal penalties. But I doubt the FBI will get involved if you decided not to pay CA for using Panvalet.
You can't over simplify the issue and decide categorically that all vendors that want to "protect" their software are bad. Just like people, there are indeed some bad vendors, whether or not they have product "protection" doesn't enter into the equation. How would a vendor even know that someone didn't take a "personal" copy of their unprotected code from site A to site B? Does that happen, it sure does. Microsoft did a study several years back on how much time they spent fixing problems and helping people who had pirated copies of their code, and it was something on the order of 38%. That didn't mean that 38% of the people running Windows were running pirated copies, just that during their study, 38% of the people who called gave pirated copy codes. They were losing more money on the support of the code for the pirated versions than was deemed "acceptable". The same problem can (and likely is) true for other vendors. Several of our Syzygy products come with parts that are not protected by keys or code. We frequently get calls from people who are not out customers to fix (usually the same problem over and over again) problems with the unprotected code who are not very happy when we inform them that we can't offer them support for the code without them being an actual client, but that doesn't stop them from trying. We had a person, just a few months ago, (who is a member of this list and knows who I am talking about), who called with a "problem" for our SyzInfo program (it's a small program we send to sites to display their site information, CPU, LPAR, SYSPLEX, MEMORY info, etc., a lot of interesting information) because they just got a z13 and our code supposedly didn't support it yet. It worked, but didn't give "completely valid" results. We actually added support for the box over 18 months before it came out, so we were fairly perplexed. When asked for his site-ID, he gave it, (it turned out to be one from his old site) and we emailed him the new code for his whole product matrix (4 complete products and support modules). Then we received a call from him to tell us that the new products would "no longer" operate on his CPU. When we asked for the CPU type and serial, he gave us his old serial from the old shop, so the client support people re-verified and sent out a new copy even though there was no real changes made. He told us that it still didn't work so we asked him to execute SyzInfo and send a screen print of the results. Instead of the screen print, he "supposedly" cut/pasted the results which showed that the product thought exactly what was running was what we shipped. He escalated the problem (which sent it to me), to be resolved, and I asked him to re-execute SyzInfo for the screen print and got the same cut/paste thing, but it was different from the original one he sent the day before. The new one had several of the values transposed and the CPU was now a EC12 not a z13 as he had originally reported having the problem with in the first place. I called him and got one of his co-workers who told me that they were not running our code, and he had no idea what I was talking about. It turned out that they were running a z13 and never had a EC12 (they upgraded from a z10 recently). I explained what had just happened and was told that he would talk to his boss and that they would handle the "problem". We never heard back from the person or that site again, but they still participate on this site. When I contacted their old site to ask if things were okay, I was told that they were going great and they had no problems whatsoever, but that the person I was asking about no longer worked there and had not for well over 2 years. Now, I realize that it's just one occurrence of a bad person, which does not make every one bad, but in our case, we expended probably 30 man-hours of time on a problem that didn't even exist. How many of those could a small company, or even a large one absorb? I would like to say this is a one-time occurrence, but I can't. Similar events happen several times a year, but normally it doesn't get to me to fix because they discover much sooner that something was amiss. Our products have built-in protection, actually they all have 3 separate protection mechanisms. We offer free trials that can go up to several months when necessary, and every product has a built-in allowance of extra time after the expiration date and we warn well in advance of the time left. Some of the products even tell you every time they execute how many days are left, which of course can be turned off (except for the last 30 days). Most vendors don't have a way to enforce voluntary compliance, but I believe that the vast majority of them have some sort of protection built into their products. And while most people believe that IBM does not keep track of product use, they would be wrong. Is it possible to get around the protections? You bet. We believe here, and I'm sure that most other vendors also believe, that he vast majority if not all of our clients are extremely trustworthy, and likewise we hope they think we are trustworthy as well. Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who said, "trust, but verify". :) Who would I be to argue with the great communicator? I worked for him for 6 years, he was no dummy. So, I also agree that this shouldn't be another long drawn out fight over "to key or not to key", and I also realize that there are some sites who might not run our products because they are protected. I don't think it's too many because we have over 700 clients. I realize this is going to sound facetious, but when I first read some of the rants from people complaining about how they are not trusted I can't help but wonder if they lock their homes and cars. Do they put the WPA2 passwords on their routers? Do they have a pin on their phone? And if so, is it just that they believe that everyone should trust them, but they need not trust everyone else? I don't expect any non sarcastic responses to this, and I probably wouldn't read them anyway, (yes I will, but I probably won't admit it), but sometimes I wonder about how people can divide their lives up so simply and exactly that everyone else who doesn't do something "their way" is "wrong". Is that a sure sign that I'm getting old that I have a hard time understanding why there seems to be no such thing as grey any more. If you're not 100% "good" then you're "bad", or more likely, if you're not 100% "like me" then you're "bad". What happened to diversity? And why get so virulent about it? Hopefully this won't start a full rant from anyone, but I'm sure it will, especially from the guy who I told you about above. Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
