27 February, 2009

The burden of history

"Dear software vendor,

"We have some of your highly-specialised and no-doubt-horribly-expensive software installed here, and we're pretty sure someone in the organisation bought it at some point in the past, only we can't find any record of who or when.

"We've also lost the installation media for it although, to be honest, I can't find any record of us ever having received any to begin with (that whole 'cannot find any purchase records'  thing I mentioned). But we must have got it from somewhere and, you know, if we had a CD for it that's almost the same as having a valid licence.

"So would you mind sending me some replacement media? I'm not totally convinced you should, but the previous Team Leader left large, noisy footprints over any internal correspondence related to it, so now everyone believes we ran the whole process and have all the answers even if we don't have the CDs, purchase records, contact details for the business or, well, anything really.

"Regards etc..."

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