Software Vendors screw their customers and the country w/ licensing schemes

Question

So AppForge and XtendConnect got bought out and the customers are again left customers holding the bag. Now we have IT solutions that would work in a technical sense but will soon fail because of licensing difficulties. The real problem here is, our business got sucked into actually depending upon technology. We continue to allow vendors to write the rules in their favor and at our expense. Licensing does nothing for me, the customer, but thanks for offering. No such choice, however!
Yet another risk of using COTS over internal development. These various licensing schemes only serve the vendors and leave their customers to clean up the mess once the vendor sells out. Imagine a world once the crack-pot vision of SOA is implemented. Any complex system will depend on a host of services owned by a variety of vendors spread across geography, each going belly-up or merging with another vendor, or constantly changing its licensing arrangements in a constant chase for the next buck. Nothing will ever work again for anyone two days in a row. It is already a monumental task keeping up with all the various licensing arrangements and renewals even on a good day.
Imagine the day your car won't even start because the license expired for the electronic ignition. Will you have to junk your car? This is not far fetched! I have a true story about an HVAC company down the road that had to scrap its entire manufacturing facility because the software used to run it expired and the software company went belly up. Too expensive to write their own software. Not very "green" either. Thank goodness our mechanical and electronic engineers (true engineers) did not do this to the country. It took short-sighted software vendors to bring us down.
Where have all the CIO's gone in all this? This is an important subject to address that effects all major corporations and Gov't. Likely, to their next higher paycheck. Actually doing something about a problem is so "last century". They much prefer the next shiny new widget and a quick path to their next paycheck. We in the trenches who actually have to do work always have to clean up their mess.
Perhaps customers need to unite and fight back against this trend and force vendors to no longer put their entire IT infrastructure investment and mission critical applications at peril. We need to twist the arms of our CIOs and management to actually do something for a change. No one should be able to have their cake and eat it too. Vendors should be allowed to protect their product but the customers should be allowed to protect their businesses and our government functions that their products were aquired to support.
Jeff

Answer 1

Hi Jeff
I hope you feel better having got all that off your chest. Strictly speaking, this sort of diatribe is better suited to a blog. Why not sign up for a virtual soapbox with Blogger or Wordpress?
Cheers, APC
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