Once upon a time…
There was a large company. It decided to concentrate on its core business, and sold off a division that was eventually bought by a UK-based company. I joined the company before the split in the '90s. They had been using Easytrieve for a long time before I got there. My current employer is a partner of the former. We send them data, and they let us sell their products. Now, Former Company is a pretty big fish and can tell their partners what to do. So they said, ‘We have a new format. Any new data you send will be in this format.’ Only Current Employer couldn’t do that. They had their mainframe-based system that puts data in to FC’s older format (and FC provided the software), but they had no way to generate the new format. Otherwise, they sent Excel files in any number of formats that they collect. So knowing that I’d worked for FC for almost a decade, that I knew their data, and that I knew Easytrieve, and FC still uses Easytrieve, they hired me. Since I know Easytrieve, they bought it. It’s worked out pretty well, even with the frustrating monkey-motions involved in getting a usable text file from Excel.
When the MA renewal came up, I thought there might be a chance to save the company some money (and expand my own skills at the same time). It would be a job of work to convert all of my Easytrieves to something new, but if the new process is ‘free’, then there can be three of us doing what I’m doing alone now. Then I could take time off when it’s convenient for me, and provide a Plan B in case a meteorite falls on my head. OTOH, if we are going to keep paying for the MA then we’ll keep EZT. But it would still be good to have a Plan B.