Beware the techie who takes things literally
- Reference: 1645432028
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/02/21/who_me/
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We start the week with a story from a reader Regomised as "Frank", and a confession from his second job following a disastrous first foray into the IT world.
Frank and a freelancing friend were working for tiny company that sold mobile data collection equipment. The company liked to punch above its weight. "On the phone we had to act as if we were at least 20-people strong," he told us.
[2]
This was a pain because every ring of the phone meant an interruption to coding.
[3]
[4]
While this was annoying, it wasn't as annoying as the boss's approach to finances.
"I had to write a demo program for showing the usefulness of those mobile data units," he said. "Basically collecting the data and showing it on a PC."
[5]
This being the end of the 1980s, the demo was coded in Turbo Pascal. However, reading and writing to the device had to be done via the RS232 interface, something the out-of-the-box Turbo Pascal of that era was not entirely suited (at least, not in the way Frank needed).
Shareware to the rescue
The shareware in question was distributed via floppy disk. It consisted of an assembly routine that could be accessed by Frank's Turbo Pascal code and did pretty much exactly what was required. The catch was the requirement for payment should the code see commercial use.
It was a one-time fee of £10 ($13.60).
Frank didn't see a problem. His boss, who had just taken delivery of an expensive new car and not been able to sell his old one, did. Pennies needed to be pinched.
So, there was no money to spare, said Frank.
[6]
His boss's take: "Works already, why pay?"
A refrain familiar to all too many open-source authors today.
Frank was an honest chap and confessed the situation to the shareware author. The author was understanding.
"He said OK. I should limit the lifetime of the software that uses his routine to a year and it would be OK for him."
So that's exactly what Frank did. After one year his app would stop working. To be absolutely sure of staying compliant, he also ensured his app would delete itself and remove all its source code.
[7]Beware the big bang in the network room
[8]To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer
[9]When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes
[10]Pop quiz: The network team didn't make your change. The server is in a locked room. What do you do?
Time passed. The boss's old car remained unsold, and as a further money-saving exercise it was suggested that perhaps Frank might like to switch from being a permanent employee to freelance? Taxes would be saved... but Frank refused.
And so, with just three months on the clock, he was unceremoniously fired.
And there the story might have ended. His former boss tried the same stunt with Frank's colleague, only to come seriously unstuck when the tax office demanded five years of back payments ("That's how long my former colleague had been working there," Frank said).
But for Frank it was on to pastures new. Even when the boss called up a year later: The company was bigger now, and perhaps Frank might like to come back?
No chance.
"He also said that the program I had written had really been a great demo at CeBit and they liked it very much," Frank recalled.
"Just that after two days of the trade fair it mysteriously disappeared from the disk and its backup did not work either."
"And they had to shut down the demo."
"Oooops."
Did Frank do right or wrong? Software stopping working after an evaluation period is, after all, the way of things.
But was the scorched-earth policy overkill and a little ethically dubious? Have your say in the comments and send us your confession in an email to [11]Who, Me? ®
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[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/14/who_me/
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Yeah, CYA is important. Get stuff in writing. Though if you are no longer employed at a place, where do you archive this kind of stuff? Is it business-related? Is it property of the company? Can you keep it? I actually do wonder about that.
Deleting the whole program? Nah, that's probably a dumb thing to do, satisfacting as it might be. Those were simpler times, though. Today it would land you in deep trouble (and rightly so).
As long as Frank had documented the behavior ...
Such as by having the demo clearly display a "this is a time-limited demo, valid until dd/mm/yy" on startup.
We're not told what steps had been taken, either verbally or in writing, to document the situation therefore we have insufficient information to decide if he was right or not. We don't even have any information as to whether the agreement with the shareware vendor including the deletion.
It seems the boss had taken a backup, which rightly refused to run. So the deletion or not of the running code is pretty moot - they still had it, and it refused to run the unlicensed shareware.
TBH, in this case I'd have probably paid the £10 myself. Not something I'd usually do, but for £10 ...
If the software was the IP of the company, then Frank is (well, was, water on the bridge now) on questionable ground. Should they have paid the £10 for the shareware? Yes. Was it right to disable the software after the agreed year if a license hadn't been bought? Yes. But to delete all the code is taking it too far. Although it sounds like the boss was rather dodgy himself, that's not an excuse.
I'd have the program show a big popup about the license violation (of the shareware library) and perhaps delete just the shareware library, and if feeling particularly helpful, include a pointer as to where to reobtain the library in the popup.
He protected his boss from legal problems IMHO..
.. with two caveats:
- it should have been made clear in a way that was provable that the boss had been informed of this approach. It's guaranteed the boss would have forgotten that in weeks, but it's a good bit of evidence to waive around.
- deleting in full, however, is something I can't see as defendable as it's not his decision - he's not the legal owner. You could make it show a massive popup box that shows the license expiry issue, but zapping the code - nope. If that plan and approach was included in the boss briefing, then maybe, but I wouldn't. Too hairy.
All IMHO, of course. I can see the entertainment/BOFH value, but in RL I'd have major reservations..
Re: He protected his boss from legal problems IMHO..
"it should have been made clear in a way that was provable that the boss had been informed of this approach."
It takes two to be informed. The boss might well have been told. He seems to have been the type who wouldn't have listened.
My $10's worth
Boss c\wouldnt spend $10, shareware guy said OK you can use it for a year, Frank complied with the self destruct condition.
He probably told the boss, but boss being boss was just yayayayayaya OK (I'm not listening).
My responsibility to you ends the moment I am no longer employed by you - No I didn't keep backups of your IP & no I don't want to come back, to rewrite it all & get fired again!
My Grandparents had a term for a boss like that. Penny wise, pound foolish. He "saved" £10 for the shareware, at the cost of having to shut down a demo during a trade fair. I bet that was good advertising.
That said I don't think the Techie is necessarily completely in the clear, unless he explained to the boss the self destruct, and the scope of the destruction. If he did do that though, fair play to him.
I find it a bit uncomfortable working for people I know are ripping off software, after all if they're willing to rip off software (especially affordable software) what else are they willing to rip off?
Yeah, that last point sums up the concerns I would have (look at the remark about the tax office wanting some back payments). Will only the boss be punished if stuff comes out? Likely he would blame it all on a rogue engineer / accountant / whatever, and come out smelling of roses...
“I find it a bit uncomfortable working for people I know are ripping off software, after all if they're willing to rip off software (especially affordable software) what else are they willing to rip off?”
You. They’re willing to rip you off, exactly as happened in this case…
Yes, that may have been my point.
I did work for a guy doing support for small businesses. One of his clients did not like having to pay for windows licences, as evidenced by all the warnings and black desktops around the office he ran. He found an excuse for not paying for my first visit. He refused to pay for my second visit until the "issue" from the first visit was resolved. I was not surprised to discover he didn't pay for my third visit, or that he eventually went out of business due to the amount of people chasing him for money owed.
I warned my boss after the first visit about the dodgy windows installs. I refused to implement a workaround for the constantly rebooting windows file server on my third visit on the grounds it would make me complicit in software piracy. I was a Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (for windows xp, and this was in the days of windows vista and windows 7 but even so) and used that as part of my justification. I don't think the client bought it, but I don't care.
I still don't know why my boss sent me back the second and third time, it's not like we were short of work at the time. That said I left that job because of cash flow issues.
Let me see if I understand this. This shareware software which sounds like an all eggs in one basket type of scenario was only installed on one machine with no backup? That's madness.
Did Frank tell his boss about the terms ? Specifically that the software would stop working after a year ?
If so, Frank had a CYA.
The way I see it, the boss was aware of the shareware code, and should have been aware of the T&Cs of the usage of that piece of code.
As long as Frank had documented the behavior ...