LDW@USCMVSA.BITNET (Leonard D Woren) (01/04/89)
To those of you contemplating which MVS TCP/IP software to get, I would like the following story to be known: When we were first looking into how to connect MVS to the Ethernet, I contacted Fibronics and ACC, who were the only two that I knew of with most of the function that we needed. (Although... I've heard rumors that KNET still doesn't have SMTP, which in late 1986 they promised me would be in the product "in 3 months".) ACC had a complete product, which we didn't get until the price came down to something we could almost afford. They bundled the 9310 and Acces/MVS for one price. We got the bundle in on a basis of "it it works, we'll buy it." ACC said that if it doesn't work, they'll make it work. They also promised us the source. (I have appended a message from one of their marketing support people which explicitly states this.) ***Now we get to the point of this posting.*** They have refused to give us the source. It took them many months to get around to looking for a bug that caused Acces/MVS to crash many times a week. It was a single incorrect instruction, which they found quickly, ONCE THEY DECIDED TO LOOK FOR IT. We went through months of agony over this. I sent them many dumps, which they apparently threw away without looking at them. If we had the source, I would have been able to find this bug myself. There are bugs in SMTP which they promised to fix. A year ago. They're still not fixed. After almost a year of fighting with them over the SMTP problems, they sent me a fix which was wrong. They had not fixed it the way that I told them to, and the fix is basically worthless. They still have not supplied a fix for this problem. (Unless it's in 2.1.1, which I haven't bothered to install because they don't bother to supply a list of what's new in new releases.) Note also that they committed in writing to us to fix various things by certain dates. They pretty much missed every date. When the May 21 date came, with no fix, they told us, "Well, we didn't have the source to that module, and we didn't have the C/370 compiler. We now have them, but we're having problems installing the C/370 compiler." I would be marginally less upset if they had been upfront with that bit of information. Now, carefully note that I'm not telling you whether or not to buy any particular product. That's up to you. And I must admit that I have asked other people running Acces/MVS about problems, and it does seem that most of the problems that we have are unique to our shop. But in making a major decision like this, you probably want to have as much information as possible. I've stated facts here. I've tried to keep my opinions out, although you might be able to read between the lines. ;-) I expect that ACC may publicly respond to this message. I expect that ACC will contact my management and complain loudly. I expect ACC to do everything except (a) give us the source as they promised, and (b) fix the problems that only seem to hit us. Here is the aforementioned message from their marketing support rep: > Received: (from LDW@USCMVSA for USCMVSA via NJE) > (M-ACP-1389; 45 LINES); Thu, 21 Apr 88 09:22:55 PDT > Received: from ASCELLA.USC.EDU by MVSA.USC.EDU > with TCP; Thu, 21 Apr 88 9:22:54 PST > Received: from oberon.USC.EDU by ascella.usc.edu (3.2/SMI-3.0DEV3) id AA07605; > Thu, 21 Apr 88 09:23:40 PDT > Received: by oberon.USC.EDU (5.51/5.5) id AA17119; > Thu, 21 Apr 88 09:23:55 PDT > Received: by ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA (5.51/4.7) > id AA05438; Thu, 21 Apr 88 09:23:00 PDT > Date: Thu, 21 Apr 88 09:23:00 PDT > From: fel@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA(Mark L. Felchlin) > Message-Id: <8804211623.AA05438@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA> > To: ldw%ascella@oberon.usc.edu > Subject: ACCES/MVS > Cc: add@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA, chris@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA, gary@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA, > mtim@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA, scheck@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA > > Leonard, > > I discussed the situation with Mr. Gary Krall, our director of Marketing, > and he proposed the following: > > 1) For us to send you the source of ACCES/MVS, we need to have the > invoices for the equipment agreed by USC that they will be paid. In > otherwords, you accept the equipment. The turnaround on the source, mailed > to you would be less than 1 week. Either Chris VandenBerg or myself would > ensure its delivery. > > 2) At this time, we are unable to improve on the SMTP time frame. The > May 21 date is what we committed to, and are working towards that date. > > If you feel that if you had the source, you could do the necessary changes > to SMTP, than the sooner USC agrees to pay for the invoices, the sooner > you have the source, the sooner you may begin work. > > Let me know what you think. > > Regards > > Mark Leonard D. Woren Senior MVS Systems Programmer <LDW@USCMVSA.BITNET> <LDW@MVSA.USC.EDU> University of Southern California