Second-hand IT alliance forms to combat 'bully' vendors

Short-sighted

If there isn't a second hand market for your particular brand your product will depreciate more quickly. Eventually your customers' bean-counters will notice and try to steer purchasing to buy kit that holds its value.

2nd hand market?

What second hand market? The article seems to be about 3rd party resellers, support and maintenance.

Anyway, isn't the politically correct term "pre-loved" these days?

Treat them like vehicles?

"If there isn't a second hand market for your particular brand your product will depreciate more quickly. Eventually your customers' bean-counters will notice and try to steer purchasing to buy kit that holds its value."

I've got to be honest, I've seen very few businesses worry about how fast equipment REALLY depreciates, they tend to assume that stuff (other than buildings) depreciates to 0 after 5 years. Mainly for tax purposes AFAIK. The problem is actually that your product *does* hold value, and I think these vendors are losing some potential sales because the current lower-end kit may be close in specification to the mid-range or higher end range of several years ago, and some people would rather save the cash and get the used kit instead.

I must agree with this though.. when some laws were passed in the US in the 1970s (during the dark times of the "malaise era"), car companies were well on the way to trying to make it so all but the most trivial car repairs would require going back to the dealership. Restricting the supply of repair parts. Restricting diagnostic information. Restricting repair information. Making it real clear that your warantee would be voided if anyone but them so much as touched the car. Well, at least here in the US the feds said "Nope!" and put a stop to that, and when some vendors later tried to restricted computer diagnostic codes, they said "nope!" again.

I'm not a fan of adding more and more legislation, but I do think similar principles should be applied to these IT vendors... repair parts should be available to anyone. Basic repair and diagnostic information should be available to all (although not necessarily further tuning information, whitepapers, advanced documentation, and so on... go ahead and restrict it if you want. Those under a support contract should get something for the money.) Furthermore, items like a SAN unit or something that relies on installed software... if they charge, say, a yearly fee for updates, then 1) Someone buying the unit used should be able to pay to reinstate the support contract and get updates, not be told "tough luck because it's been resold." 2) If someone *doesn't* pay, no more software upgrades, but they should not be able to disable the software already on the unit, or sue them for having unlicensed software, or whatever**. Regarding this, it may be a good idea to have bugfixes available to all (so if you had like software 3.4.x, the 3.4.x patches are available to all, but not the installer to install 3.5.x or 4.0 over 3.4.x, those are for paying customers).

**Of course, systems where you are paying some hopefully discounted annual fee to lease the existing software, rather than for updates, is a different matter. Obviously barring this practice would make companies quite unhappy that are saving money from leasing software rather than paying more up front and paying just for updates.

On a side note, re: spaz, you know, as far as I knew this was just some somewhat outdated 1980's slang. I think when people have to explain the origins of some term that is little-used anyway, to explain why people should be offended by it, it's time to lighten up. Also, not to nitpick but discrimination is discriminatory, using some naughty word is not.

Way back in 1972 when the EEC was being created

It was to be formed by countries accepting 100 directives. This was amended to 99 by the UK's refusal to sign up to a directive banning pattern parts (not just any radiator hose but now it's a reassuringly expensive BMW radiator hose)

I've sometimes mused whether this and similar gave rise to the IP wars we've seen over the year ("rounded corners" anyone)

Perhaps the return to trying to eliminate third parties reflects the turning tide in IP wars, but it would be interesting to see how this one pans out as the topic is well worked over

see also

Microsoft claims victory over second-hand software broker

iFixit boss: Apple has 'done everything it can to put repair guys out of business'

Hacker catches Apple's Lightning in a jailbroken bottle

among others...

Well, this is why you look at lifetime TCO. With the subtext "I assume your kit is unreliable - why else would your annual support contract be so expensive".