[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] The choice of proprietary - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"
Monday, September 10, 2007 8:02 PM bradley

The choice of proprietary

I'm sorry but I have to make a public blog comment... and I love the Peeved blog...but this ... I have to comment on..

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2007/09/09/is-it-their-document-retention-policy-or-my-software-retention-policy-that-s-more-important-here.aspx#1185142

Mr. Peeved... this is an American US tax calculation software.  Your comment that "I have a choice" ...all I have to do is to not use "proprietary software" is not being aware of the American Accounting software industry....and quite frankly the issue with software vendors as a whole.

Fact.. as a professional Accounting firm if you can find me an "open source tax software" that is built for a CPA firm, show me.  Because as a professional business we go with first filtering out the software options by looking at what everyone else is using.  That's Lacerte, CCH, Creative Solutions and a few others. 

Furthermore, in the industry there is this move to software suites.  So that your tax software hooks to your billing software which hooks to your client write up software which hooks to your audit software and so on.  The goal being such that you get so stuck on one vendor that it's a business productivity nightmare to change vendors.

 We moved from Lacerte to CCH for various reasons and for a rough tax season we had a productivity hit.  One does not tell a business glibly "you have a choice" when you know it will hit the bottom line.

So while I appreciate the thought... the business reality is that I tell the Vendor that no, dude, I'm your customer and while you have me glued to your product that doesn't mean that you should (in the manner of Microsoft, Dell AND Apple these days) treat me less than respectfully.

There is typically a business productivity reason for staying with a certain vendor.  One cannot be blind with the loss of productivity when an upgrade is done (and that's why people are sticking with XP).  So when you have salaries and employees and what not, that choice isn't quite as free as one thinks.

Just another view out here of why sometimes the choice means we have to stay with proprietary things.

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# re: The choice of proprietary

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 9:00 AM by Evan Anderson

(Tee-hee...  I'm having a great time here, and I hope you are, too.  *smile*)

A bit of background, first: I work with law offices and CPAs who do US income tax preparation work. I'm very familiar with the CCH ProSystem products, and have had passing experience with the Lacerte products. US income tax preparation software is a sink-hole of crap, with endless upgrade treadmills and poor technology choices ("tax software" means "cruddy shared-file database" to me).  I'm well aware of the "state of the art" in the industry, and it seems to be tilted in the direction of the "manufacturers" very sharply. (I think it relates directly to the sorry state of affairs that is the US federal tax code-- but that's another comment entirely...)

Industry aside, if you choose to use proprietary software, you get all the good and bad things that come with using proprietary software. You get "support", you get "upgrade maintenance fees", you don't have to write the code yourself (or to directly pay someone to write the code), and you get your data held hostage by a the support policies of the "manufacturer". Those are the facts of making that choice, no matter what industry you're in.

You've *always* had the choice to pay someone directly to write the software you need for-hire, or to not use software at all. Choosing not to use proprietary software may not be a good choices for your industry and size of business, but *you* *still* *have* *the* *choice*.

There's nothing "glib" about it-- it's actually pretty ugly and frustrating. On one hand, you have the potential loss of competitiveness that comes from not using any software at all, or the expense and headache of paying for custom software to be written. On the other hand, using proprietary software means that your data is accessible at the whim of a "manufacturer", your legal recourse will probably be limited by the software licensing terms, and the potential (as you described in your post above) for implementation artifacts and bugs to cause a direct "hit" to your business operations. (It's doubly frustrating that you can't just correct bugs yourself-- or pay someone else to correct them for you-- because you don't have the source code. To boot, what may be a critical bug to you may not have any importance with the "manufacturer"-- or, worst of all, they could consider your bug to be a "feature".)

You made a business-decision, and now you have to live with the consequences therewith.

What you're saying about standing up to the "manufacturers" is the right thing to do, and I applaud you for it. That should be the reaction that all businesses have to these endless "upgrade treadmills" and the poor quality of commercial proprietary software. I wish more businesses would react the way you are. A smart software "manufacturer" would provide a quality product with quality "support", timely response to Customer issues, and a commitment to preserving accessibility of data stored in their software or "setting it free" when an old product has lost its profit potential. If more Customers pushed their software "manufacturers" and "voted with their wallets", rather than just taking whatever is shoved down their throats, we might see the state of the art in the software industry getting better.

If you're the only one standing up to your software "manufacturer", though, you're just shouting at a brick wall.

(I'm not sure how we got to talking about productivity costs of "free" upgrades. I didn't go there. Of *course* "free" software isn't "free". All the soft-costs of using software-- work flow changes, user familiarity, training issues, etc-- amount to a lot more than the initial expense of the software licensing. There are major issues associated with any migration of software that supports business functions. Moving from different versions of the same operating system or application can be painful, let alone moving to products from different "manufacturers".)

Open source enterprise-grade US federal income tax preparation software isn't going to come from hobbyists "scratching an itch". It might come from a few tax preparation firms who get together jointly and decide to contract with developers, reasoning that their investment today would translate into a better software ecosystem (and reduced overall hard/soft expense) down the road. I don't think a culture of cooperation exists in the tax preparation industry for that to ever happen, though. Personally, I'd like to see major revision to the US federal tax code that eliminated the need for the entire tax preparation industry. It would free up the good CPAs to focus on interesting business problems, and would eliminate the market and jobs for CPAs who exist to profiteer from the needlessly baroque US federal fax code. That, however, is a political discussion that isn't fit for this post either.