While surfing on Digg today, I came across an article called “Proprietary Software Can Kill You.” Basically, there has been an incident where doctors refused to pay the new, more-than-quadrupled tech support fee for some program that they use for their patients’ records; and they were consequently cut off from their patients’ records without some updated password.
While it is contractually correct for the vendor to disable the use of something the user did not pay for, it is ethically incorrect to hold the lives of many ransom over any amount of money. It is the first fundamental canon of engineering ethics (which, to my irritation, not many people care about these days): to “hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.” Is there really not a better way, like making records read-only when the contract expired? Additionally, where do data formats come in?
A file can contain anything it pleases, and the only thing that could make sense out of its contents is the program that made this file. Imagine a medical practice found a better, more affordable solution to keep its patients’ data. Taking into consideration what I said and with no documentation on what the specifications of the file is, it will take a massive effort in order to port the data over to the new system. Therefore, a vendor has even more reason to hold the data hostage: The prospect of having to re-enter information is simply daunting.
Therefore, I believe that the combination of contracts, proprietary data formats, and vendor-lock in is a deadly combination. I swear to never be the person coding such an extreme, for the means between extremes (a compromise, if you will) is The Way to happiness.
Title changed per Cody Goodman‘s recommendation.
