Second-hand IT alliance forms to combat 'bully' vendors Second-hand IT providers have formed an alliance to combat what they claim are increasingly aggressive tactics by big vendors desperate to claw back falling revenue. Tomas O'Leary, secretary of Free ICT Europe, and chief executive of independent provider of IBM software maintenance Origina, claimed big vendors have stepped up …
Unless, of course, the manufacturers act in cartel and make it so that NO ONE encourages secondhand sales. Much like how older appliance dealers would break up appliances taken in for part exchange. Then the bean counters have no choice because the customers won't accept going without.
Products like this are depreciated at maximum rates and are essentially worthless after 5 years anyway.
Outfits who buy refurbed kit are either life-extending their existing stuff or couldn't afford to buy new anyway.
The first sale doctrine was established a long time ago. It'll be interesting to see if any of the regulators hit the OEMs with restraint of trade action
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I believe that photo is actually a still from a happy slapping video, shot by one of the perpetrators (remember that craze)? . It then got made into a still and uploaded as a "free" image.
Quite a few of these got used, as people thought incorrectly as they were on the internet, they were staged stock images, but unfortunately the are not.
Still, look forward to still images of the poor person who has lost their leg with the tag "Roller-coaster Accident" being used in article about stock prices.
"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.
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...
If a software needs a bug fix or a security patch, it should be free, no matter if your support contract is up to date or not, if I buy a product, whatever it is, the minimum expectation is that it is not broken, and if it is, the manufacturer should fix it or replace it accordingly, otherwhise it is fraud.
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