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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paul e thomas who wrote (8529)	12/25/1997 1:15:00 PM
From: Josef Svejk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13949

merrychristmas.com all.com josef.com

To: paul e thomas who wrote (8529)	12/25/1997 10:45:00 PM
From: P. Ramamoorthy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13949

For what's worth - saw the following in VBTech: "Y2K: Not Just a Good Idea, It's the Law" In case you weren't already lying awake at night sweating about your 2000 problems, here's another one: John E. Kreitler, a partner in the law firm of Shipman & Goodwin LLP and co-chair of the firm's Ventures and Intellectual Property practice, says that you have legal issues to consider as you plan, implement, test, and deploy your year 2000 compliance corrections. On the positive side, Kreitler says, you might be able to share some of the pain: "Often, software licenses, warrantees, and maintenance agreements are sufficiently comprehensive to require the vendor to correct millennium problems." But on the flip side, if you want to correct the problem in-house, be sure you have the source code and sufficient rights to modify it for production use. Says Kreitler, "Software modified to use four-digit dates is probably a derivative work of the original. Therefore, you may need the consent of the vendor to make code changes." Worse, even if you can make the code changes, you might get cut off from technical support and maintenance for making the changes. If you hire outside help to make you software year 2000-compliant, make sure you get a contract: "This contract should state the scope of work, contain a comprehensive assurance that year 2000 compliance will be achieved, and deal effectively with crucial scheduling and other date-sensitive tasks," says Kreitler. As costs are expected to skyrocket the closer we get to year 2000 - it's just two years away, kids! - you might be tempted to use "offshore" programmers. Just make sure you comply with export control laws. In case fixing the problems weren't enough of a hassle, Kreitler advises that you could face trouble for not disclosing you have the problems. "For publicly held companies, the failure to disclose a known material year 2000 problem in form 10-K and quarterly reports may violate Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure requirements." Disclosure rules also apply when you want to sell a business, it's no use trying to dump your problems on someone else. "Every aspect of this response must be carefully planned, including an assessment of the legal issues," Kreitler concludes. Great - another item for the to do list. Hoping to see more legal stuff... Ram