[LINK] Rampaging bugbear

[Rick Welykochy]

Jan Whitaker wrote:

> why are MS and other commercial products allowed to get away with licenses
> that let them off the hook from non-performance or damages caused as a
> result of using their products, when clients of consultants, especially big
> organisation clients like government, require contracts that say us little
> guys take the responsibility?

You took the words right out of my mouth, Jan. Why indeed? A few things to
consider in this regard:

(*) we SMEs would not get very far if we proposed contracts that abrigated our
    responsibilities as much as the onerous shrink-wrap licences manage to
    accomplish (imagine a contract that stated we could remotely access the
    computer systems on which we work at any time and upgrade software as
    we see fit, maintain a separate database on licence and other machine
    info, etc.etc. a la "latest from MS"!)

(*) I have seen estimates (here on LINK?) that upwards of 85% of outsourced
    and contracted computer systems jobs wind up failures, i.e. unfinished,
    did not deliver according to specs, that kind of thing. Thus, a reasonable
    performance and delivery clause in an IT contract would be to specify that
    the job(s)in the contract will be delivered at a standard "common in the
    IT industry" ... that otta shut'em up!

Hmmm ... the phrase "world's best practice' is really a joke in IT, isn't it?
If the best the IT industry can do is deliver, say, even a 20% success rate
in outsourced / contracted jobs, than perhaps "delivery and performance according
to world's best practice in the IT industry" would be a good safety net ;)


BTW: It might amuse some Linkers to recall some of the IT horror stories that
have been reported on this List. Some real shockers come to mind - were these
people sued or was compensation sought? IIRC, in the case of gummint outsourcing
botchups, managers' / dept.heads' firmly cover their backsides by stridently ignoring
outsourcing's fail to deliver and even let contracters off of there obligations.
It all looks better this way, 'at the end of the day' (cringe).


cheers
rickw


-- 
_________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services

Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should be changed
regularly and for the same reason.
-- Gerry Brooks (in the Toronto Globe & Mail)
----------
For Link list information see http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/link/