DK_PETER wrote:@Juror
Those conditions are in my view completely intolerable.
Actually, they're not that unusual for government agencies in this country. I've worked for large companies where the contracts with small vendors were even worse.
DK_PETER wrote:
If you can satisfy their needs using an obsolete version of PB to their satisfaction - they should have a problem..???
Most of these types of contracts have grown over the years to accommodate each/every eventuality. Some agency may have been burned sometime using unsupported software. As I said, I've seen worse than these. When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, our contracts were much worse than these, largely because we had to cover every eventuality from an FDA regulatory view. From what I've read in the forums, frequent contributor DoubleDutch may work in an environment even more restrictive than ours.
DK_PETER wrote:Do they require, that you show receipts for your PB purchase and examine your version of PB?
They haven't yet, but our records are audit-able by them anytime they demand.
DK_PETER wrote:This is pure madness. Under no circumstance would I agree to such terms.
You're obviously much more successful than we are. We don't love the terms, but we can live with them in order to get the business. As I said, without their contract business, we don't remain a viable business. Individual end-user sales are not sufficient. We're actually phasing out our end-user sales in order to concentrate on securing additional contracts. It's possible that since many small suppliers feel like you do, and will not agree to their terms, we are at an advantage because we will.
Sorry. I'm beginning to stray far too "off-topic". We will accommodate the unicode change. It would just be nicer if we had a little more time. And it's not an option for us to "just use an unsupported version".