[samuel_adams_us]

Let's enlighten them a little more with a possible scenario. A terrorist concern in India is writing the software that runs the banks in the United States. On Jan 01, 2004 the software will no longer function, not only is this software installed at most of the banks around the world, it's installed at the US Government as well. Not only does this software not function, it wipes out the entire system. What do you do now?

[AppyPappy]

That is not necessarily a terrorist. They can include time bombs in case there is any disagreement on pricing. What are you going to do? Go to India and sue them?

We bought some COBOL source code from an Indian company in the early 80's for the bank where I worked. When we got the code, the variable names were all simplistic (A1, B3). When we complained, they offered to sell us the documentation for the variable names (A1 = Interest-Rate)