Perpetual I'm pi**ed off thread

[rogue]

I have had a rather bad week. I was so frustrated and angry over a dispute in my company that I had to leave. Here is the situation.

The company I work has multiple product lines. Each product line has its own license. Some lines have a single site-level license. Others have a graduated license, where the customer pays based upon the functionality that is installed and used. The software I work on does not require any other product in our company to function, but we do have the ability to integrate with the other products. That integration is dependent upon configuration and that the other software is installed.

We have a customer who has licenses to two of our products (actually three, but the third is unimportant). They license the software I work on, Product A. Product A requires a site-level license. They also license Product B, which requires a graduated license. The customer has paid only for the lowest license level of Product B. Part of the license agreement that the customer has for Product B is that it needs to get a total cost. To get the total cost Product B needs to use components that are part of a higher license for that product. The total cost is viewable to the customer even though they have only purchased the lowest license because the customer uses that cost for billing, which my company is perfectly aware of and has no issues with.

Product A has the ability to send a request to Product B that causes it to return a large amount of information in a delimited form. The ability is there because the customer has a license to Product B. Any level of license for Product B is sufficient for this information request. The total cost is included in the information returned from Product B. Product A shows the total cost.

Product Team B is pissed at me because Product A shows the total cost. It is their opinion that the customer needs to pay for the higher level license to get that cost.

I'm pissed off because I have personally taking the brunt of the attack from Product Team B. I wrote the code to display the cost, so I can understand them being upset at me. It is my opinion that if the data is freely available, then I (or the customer) can use it as they see fit. If the customer wanted to they could use Product B to do the exact same thing I am doing. It might take a few extra minutes, but they could do it. I shouldn't be the bad guy because of how they licensed the software to the customer. I have no visibility to the license agreement, so how am I to know that I broke it.

At this point of the game, I'm stepping back. I'll letting my product manager deal with theirs and apparently the two VPs above them are also involved. The best I can hope for is a public apology from Product Team B. I am willing to modify my software to not show the total cost, but I think that the real problem lies on their end and that they make it available in the first place.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by rogue

< snip > Product A < snip > Product B < snip > I think that the real problem lies on their end and that they make it available in the first place.

You didn't ask for advice or other commentary, so this may not be welcome --

It seems to me that the problem is that there's a flaw in your product-to-product data-passing interface, not that it's exclusively either Team A's or Team B's fault necessarily.

Either:

(a) the interface was not designed with proper consideration of the effects of differing licensing levels, or

(b) an introduction or change of the licensing level scheme after the interface was designed broke the assumptions used in the interface design.

[rogue]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

(a) the interface was not designed with proper consideration of the effects of differing licensing levels, or

(b) an introduction or change of the licensing level scheme after the interface was designed broke the assumptions used in the interface design.

I tried to avoid specifying my own opinions because I'm certain that others have been in similar circumstances and I don't want to sway opinion. As for point a, this is probably correct. I have been told that Team B will not customize their software for us. As for point b, the interface has been around for a while although we took advantage of it for the first time earlier this year. It is possible that the licensing scheme changed, but unlikely. The interface is specifically used to do address validation and to get a total cost. The name of the interface itself uses the term "rate", so one can naturally assume that cost is a component of the rate.

[garo]

Students! They get worse every year.

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by garo

Students! They get worse every year.

And policemen are getting younger.

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by garo

Students! They get worse every year.

Dumber???, Badder???, Lazier???, All of the the above???

[garo]

All of the above!

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by garo

Students! They get worse every year.

My (Oxonian) father (Exeter 1921) made great play of a distinction
between "students" and "undergraduates".
If you've caught any Armstrong and Miller on telly, you would
appreciate that if you want any repeck these days, they call
themselves "Schtudents".

PS and attend "Uni"

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by petrw1

Dumber???, Badder???, Lazier???, All of the the above???

Attention spans no wider than a sheet of paper is thick. Can read very little. Can write even less. Could not spell s**t if they had a mouth full. Common of the IQ's below 100.