Copyright (C) 1996 by Thomas Lapp 

               THE CASE OF THE BORROWED HARDWARE 

You have been working at a small insurance company for the past year.
The insurance company uses a LAN (local area network) to connect the
desktop PCs to a server (a larger, more expensive PC) where all of
the insurance software runs (this software comes from the Unique
Corporation).

You've been told that the Unique Co's software that is being used is
not working very well, and are asked to look into alternatives for
the company.  You've already been working with Unique Co 
support people on the problems, and they suggest that you upgrade
to version 2.0 software, which they say will solve all of your
present problems.

Unfortunately, the server that you have is not big
enough to run both the existing software and the new version 2.0 
software.  So, the Unique Corporation is willing to loan you 
a server to test it on.  This is all very fine, and you get the
test server installed and running.

Since you've been looking into alternatives, you also have received
a copy of the new MicroSquish software to evaluate.  But alas, 
MicroSquish cannot provide a server for you to test on.  Your
original plan was to rent a separate server for a few weeks to
test the MicroSquish software, but that would cost money out of
your already slim budget.   One way out of this would be to use
the server that you borrowed from Unique Corporation and install
and test the MicroSquish software on that machine, saving you
the cost of renting your own.

So you are left with a dilemma:

Do you install the MicroSquish software on the server provided by
Unique Co even though these are competing firms?  After all,
Unique Corporation provided the hardware to let you test Unique
software, not MicroSquish software.  Do you test the MicroSquish
stuff, but just not tell Unique?  Do you ask Unique Corporation
if you can test the MicroSquish software on their machine? 
If you decide to test on the Unique Co's hardware, do you tell
MicroSquish (after all, if any MicroSquish software were left on
it when it went back to Unique Corporation, they might be able
to figure out MicroSquish coding secrets)?  Does your answer change
if you find out that your users have to have a new program in
four weeks, which isn't long enough to rent a machine and test
the MicroSquish software?  In what way?