I’ve been using and supporting a legacy ERP software application called MANMAN since 1978. One of the wonderful things about MANMAN is that many of the customers have all the source code for this large application they use as their primary manufacturing planning and execution system. The best part for me is that it is all written in FORTRAN/77 and runs on the HP3000 with the MPE OS and IMAGE database. MANMAN is currently owned by Infor.

There is also a version of MANMAN in the VAX/Alpha OpenVMS OS environment, but I am not as familiar with it as I am with the MPE versions. Neither product is considered viable from a marketability standpoint in today’s active ERP software arena. Nobody would buy MANMAN/MPE on its dying platform. Neither are any new sales of Infor’s MANMAN/VMS likely to occur. Almost comparable to today’s overwhelming ERP systems, MANMAN is simple but comprehensive and the data is accessible through MPE’s IMAGE Database and ODBC.

Note that I said many of the customers have all of the source code. MANMAN is now on its fourth owner, having been written by ASK Computer Systems (later The ASK Group) in the early 1970’s. I started my own company, the Support Group, inc. (tSGi) in 1994 when Computer Associates (CA) bought The ASK Group. MANMAN/MPE, my specialty, is now on Release 12, but many customers are still on a version prior to Release 10. In Release 9, the best version from a supportability perspective in my own opinion, the developers added some code, the source to which did not get sent to any customers. That code limits the number of users who can simultaneously access the application software. There is no practical limit for access through IMAGE or ODBC. Thousands of simultaneous users can access MANMAN/MPE on a large HP3000. But the “unlimited use” licenses are the minority, I believe.

As a separate issue from the numerous source code releases, there were, and still are, many versions of the license and contract to use MANMAN. ASK’s original contracts were set up so that MANMAN could be used on a particular machine (Serial Number). Later, in 1984, around the time of Release 5, ASK went to a “per user” pricing strategy. It was a “concurrent user” license, not a “named user” license.

When ASK announced the new pricing strategy, many customers who bought MANMAN before 1984 received a “grandfather” offer to be able to use MANMAN on any machine. A primary implication of “user pricing” as compared to the then prevalent “Serial Number pricing” is the “use on any one computer” paradigm. Prior to Release 9, there was no real checking or limiting of the number of users actually running the software at any particular time; it was an honor system that may or may not have been abused.

Around 1995 Computer Associates replaced the original ASK software license contracts with several replacement versions, all of which probably cancelled all prior agreements concerning the use of MANMAN. Instead of the perpetual use maintenance contract ASK had used to extend annual subscription support and software updates, CA inserted a usage clause that replaced the perpetual wording. I own a company that has, for 15 years, competed with whoever owns MANMAN. We offer various levels of support, from phone-in help desk to complete turn-key managed services and facilities provisioning. On my advice, many companies using MANMAN left support in 1995. They remain frozen on Release 9 to this day. They did not sign the CA contracts. Others signed the contracts but deleted the “usage” clauses, accepting and paying for only maintenance support and possible future upgrades.

Is it possible to go back to a prior release, stored on tape from old backups, and thereby fall under the original contract effective at the time of last use of that release? The CA and Infor contracts are for newer versions, Releases 10, 11, and 12. The ASK Computer Systems perpetual contracts were for Release 9 and before. Every company running MANMAN probably has a backup tape with their Release 9 data, programs, and configurations. Can they go back to the way things were before CA bought ASK? I’m just wondering…