[time-nuts] Maintaining boatanchors

[Jason Rabel]

This is slightly off on a tangent, but has to do with licenses... 

I had some old Alteon equipment which I needed a firmware update for. Nortel bought Alteon, but they continued the products and
updates (for a while).

Most the products were EOL (including the one I had), we're talking past updates, past support, past everything. HOWEVER, Nortel
still had files on their website for download. You could download documents and such no problems... But firmware files you needed an
account with certain support level to download.

So I try to contact Nortel, they tell me I need a service contract so that I can download the firmware files. Okay, I ask them to
for that department. The service department tells me I can't get a contract because the products are EOL. So I ask them how am I
supposed to download the files if I need a service contract, but he's telling me I can't get a contract? *sigh*

After constant pestering, I guess someone there finally felt sorry for me and changed my account so that I could *finally* download
the files... But man, what a freaking zoo... 

> Even if you have the source code, you need to keep the compiling 
> environment in a runable state. This may be problematic since things 
> like licensees may have gone out (nobody payed for them and you can't 
> get a new one), the machines setup for running it has dropped out of 
> service. Maybe some manual work was never automated so some of the magic 
> is in the hands of someone that doesn't work there anymore... or recall it.