Gents,
Although I agree with the part about "the cost" to both sides being the possible real limiting factor let me tell you that the "request" we recieved to remove and be gone in 30 days was, unfortunately quite real.

As I'vd said before, I totally admit to being more and more in your face as things did not get resolved properly. But we also saw not fixing a beta site's data that the developer himself thought was most probably corupted by the use of a previous beta version months earlier as not very polite or AC ethical either. And so the stupid thing took on a life of it's own and just got worse and worse. I have privately and publicly owned up to our and my own 50% of what went wrong here as this is my M.O. when treated poorly and rudely. But other than pulling back from the brink and the edge and "allowing" us to stay on under restricted circumstances we have never recieved an admission or apology of the same for their 50% from AC.

As I have also stated a long time ago, I suggested to Jon that he offer an ASP model of both the EMR and PM side of the program, but to do it in a very AC, ethical way. By insisting that the clients purchase a real license to the program and recieve a copy there of, because AC will never hold your data hostage like the traditional ASP's will. You the client will always be a licensed owner of the software you purchased and so you will always have at the very least archival access to your old data and charts. As you've all said better than I have; this stuff is just way too important. These are our patients' PHI, Medical Records and our documentation there of, for all of the reasons we in this business need to do such things. There is a VAR who sells Altapoint under just such conditions and basic terms which is where I got the idea to suggest to Jon. I sent this suggestion to both Jon and Carlos I never did hear back from either one of them on this suggestion....

So here is where I'm coming from... Since the clause has been sort of just about executed at least once already, then obviously it can and probably will be used again, right? Take all the personal garbage out of this, and it's still just not right. Simply live and let live. Have a nice day, fly without a net, but you do own the last copy you paid for and have a nice life. So why is it there and why won't the most ethical software vendor on this side of the business understand or cooperate with this? Why did he put it in there in the first place? Perhaps if enough users voice their disapproval of such a clause, then maybe, just maybe, Jon might change this policy back to a more customer friendly one. And what did happen to our old EULA that us older users originally agreed to? Does anyone still have a copy of the old original one and if so would you please post a copy of it for everyone? Could you please send me one?

And yes I totally agree with Jon deserving every penny that we all pay him if not a good deal more. I was one of the first (#2 I think) people to suggest we give him an up front, down payment to the new PM to assist in it's R&D. When my credit card had trouble going thru this past Febuary to pay for our renewal, I was the one calling AC almost daily saying, "I want to pay you, what should we do? You guys deserve this money." Nancy and I have been a beta site for about a year or more now, because we want to assist in the development of this fine product. I was one of Jon and AC's biggest supporters, even offering to go the the NYS AAFP meeting this spring in support of quality small vendors like him and AC. I was asking Jon and AC to send me some sort of demo copy with false patients and data that I might be able to properly demostrate for a large audience, just what $1K can still buy you when you shop wisely. Our State medical society was working with state gov't on getting grants for small poor practices to assist us in buying big expensive programs; basically give corporate wellfare to GE and the other large vendors. I was going to try and fight, (Nancy was being offered and supported to be a delegate, and so I was going to address the meeting as her rep.) for better support of quality small vendors that practices could afford and support on their own and not throw away our tax dollars giving money to the rich and powerful.

But basically until this set of unfortunate events transpired between Village Medical of CNY and AC, Paul and Nancy were some of Jon and AC's strongest and most loyal supporters. We did not reach this point today without there being some amount of mishandling of the situation on their side. I know without going inappropriately into too much detail that Jon was going thru some pretty bad stuff personally and I wish him nothing but the best. But we never knew that such was the case until things had pretty much blown up already. AC is going thru growning pains and we found that their tech support was less than great. The ladies who were handling our issue this past winter, would just pop you on hold in mid-sentence, didn't seem to be very up on a number of important issues and new developments, and just in general didn't give us a feeling of being on top of things. This is AC's issue to deal with.

In closing I guess as a previously strong AC supporter because of their great product and extremely ethical corporate policies, all I would really like is to see a return to such in "writing" when it comes to the EULA. And I think we need to have the support section be better spelled out. What is supported, what is not. Is data coruption part of that and under what conditions and terms. What is the "covenant" between the beta's and the developer and shouldn't beta's be supported in a different fashion than regular end users, seeing that we are putting our offices and our data at a higher level of risk, so as to assist and support in the continued development if this fine product that we all really want to see suceed? I personally don't feel that such requests and desires are very unreasonable. I like Bert feel that a little more feedback from the group is critical to some of these more important issues. Please people, chime in here. Thanks so much. To AC.....

Paul

"Beware of the Medical Industrial Complex"
"The Insurance Industry is a Legalized CARTEL"