Chapter 9 / UCITA

greenspun.com : LUSENET : HumptyDumptyY2K : One Thread

In talking about software warranties, you might want to consider mentioning the UCITA resolution that was recently passed for several reasons.

First of all, UCITA "strengthens" the hand of software companies against individuals in terms of licensing.

It restricts the "reverse engineering" or "disassembling" of products, which hampers individual efforts to "tinker" or "fix" software in the manner you describe in Chapter 9. For more info, I'd visit the Infoworld website (www.infoworld.com) as one of the authors there has made UCITA his cause 'celeb.

UCITA also attempts to strengthen penalties for software piracy which software companies might see as good, but weakens the ability of customers to get updates to "older" software which, in fact, will be the "core" of Y2K problems. Companies are ever more aggressive in "forcing" product updates and refusing to sell and support older versions (and fix Y2K in older versions) which inherently "destabilizes" the customer environment, by forcing what many customers believe is unnecessary change on them. Customers using older products past the "expiration" date might even be seen a "pirates".

UCITA makes the software industry even more powerful against software customer, in a time when prior irresponsibility in writing software (with respect to Y2K), should drive customers to desire a "stronger hand" against software companies by fixing problems with older versions, rather than forcing quarterly or semi-annual updates (which destabilize software systems).

UCITA, from what I understand, is now just a recommendation by the federal government, but will become the "basis" by which new state law is going to be made in the software industry.

Is there a reason you didn't bring up UCITA, Ed?

-- Glen Austin (gdaustin@aol.com), August 18, 1999


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