Re: General AS/400 Question -- MIDRANGE-L

Paul Musselmann recently mentioned Help System's Robot products in response to
this question.  Let me add my 2 cents about that.

About 18 months ago, I evaluated Help System's paging product as part of a
project to un-staff my night shift.  I figured since they have market-share
they MUST be a reputable company.  I was wrong.  Here's what happend:

  I loaded the program, according to the directions, as QSECOFR.   I fully
realize that this, in itself can be suspect and I should (and did) require my
software NOT to need QSECOFR for any reason.  However, I also realize that this
is sometime the best way to load software, when the person doing the load may
not have the legitimately needed authorities to do the setup (e.g. *IOSYSCFG
for comm configuration, etc) under their own profile - even though they may
have all the authority they need to run the product.  So I loaded.  And I found
that their install program, WITH NO FOREWARNING OR PERMISSION, in the
documentation or on a screen at install time, CHANGED MY QSYSLIBL.  They PUT
RBTSYSADM (or some such library name, their baseline library at any rate)  AH
EAD OF QSYS in my qsyslibl WITH *PUBLIC *CHANGE authority. Needlless to say I
was not happy.  I was even less happy when I discovered *2* SYSTEM-STATE MI
programs in their libraries.  I was told by their tech support that 'this is
the only way' they can make their function run - but in the case of at least
one of those programs they simply needed the correct MI command.  When I called
them on these two intrusions, questioning the whys and wherefores I was told
that they do this for their customers' convenience and that they didn't need my
business (I was in state government at the time) if I didn't like the way they
wrote their code.  That came from one of their Vice Presidents.  They didn't
get my business.  I don't do business with hackers who hide under the covers of
"this is the only way" and "our customers want the convenience".

 For those who want to know, my business went to MBA for their Page Manager
product.  Yes, they needed QSECOFR to load - but only for the ease in creating
line/controller/device descriptions.  And, when I called them they explained in
great detail what happend in their installation program and why - to the extent
of faxing me their source code to review.  I found their tech reps easy to work
with and genuinely concerned with not only making life easier for their
customers but also respecting their customers' security requirements.

Laura Ausel  -  Keane, Inc., Service Partner
"Do something.  Lead, follow, or get out of the way."
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