Re: SMA policy was: JAWS update now available

  • From: "Yardbird" <yardbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 09:39:34 -0700

Alan,

Of course I understand. Every time the list has one of its sporadic shudders 
of revulsion against FS, the recurrent question is why not switch. If the 
disincentives for voting with consumer feet weren't so formidable as they 
actually are, so many of us would by now have become Window eyes users that 
list traffic here would be vastly reduced. For better or worse. But mostly, 
we don't do that foot-vote, and life goes on until the next time there's 
occasion for major complaints about the product and/or the tech support. So 
I was just catching the fever of that resentment and tossing in my own two 
cents'  worth of distaste for the Empire, the hegemon of this market. and 
now the shudder subsides, and we go on, resigned as always.

Which may sound sad or even pathetic, but I think it's okay. The actual sad 
part is the resentment between the lines that I think is engendered by 
feelings of helplessness and dependency in the face, first, of needing 
adaptive assistance at all, which I think is perfectly natural, and has to 
be born with or put out of mind for the sake of sanity, and more to the 
point, resentment of the dependency on state rehab agencies for their needed 
largesse and for their taking the prerogative to favor the product they've 
determined to be the safest bet.

anyway, it's all done, now, and we go on, as usual. Which is okay. And FS 
will have its way with signing people up and making it hard for them to 
defect, at least in re Jaws. So it goes.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Clendinen" <alanclendinen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2007 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: SMA policy was: JAWS update now available


Daniel,

No, I haven't looked into the legality of the FS SMA policy, but I seem to 
recall from a business law course I took back in my college years, that 
businesses are given a lot of leeway in the area of product upgrades and 
software maintenance agreements.

I'm reluctant to switch to another screen-reader application, as I'm used to 
JFW, having used it since 1995 in a professional capacity as a programmer. 
Besides, no screen-reader is perfect. They all have their flaws. Switching 
to a different screen-readerwould only give me a different set of problems.

Regards,
Alan

Daniel wrote:

Alan,

I've always suspected that might be the way the SMA arrangement works, but
never had occasion to test it by trying to drop out for a release or two.
What you describe sounds legally actionable, although I'm sure it isn't
because FS certainly has either its own in-house counsel or a captive law
firm at their bidding, and knows what they can get away with. But to say
only that this scenario is unfair seems inadequate.  In other words, despite
all, it nonetheless just plain sounds illegal. Have you ever checked into
this?

Shaking my head in disbelief,
Daniel



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