David.Poole (5/3/2015)
The thing that was overlooked was that outsourced staff are just like us. They want to get their hands on the new toys. Would you accept a job offering you the chance to work on SQL2000?
What's the pay?
I completely agree that it isn't just the cost of software. I've run into a few environments that were paying very highly for VAX, COBOL, and other experience because they could only hire contractors, and those were expensive.
However, I can't say it was a bad decision as long as they weren't dependent on one person. Who knows what the cost might have been to rewrite or upgrade the entire system.
It's not a system in isolation, but it also can be a few systems and not all. Would you work on SQL 2000 if there were SQL 2012 systems there? Would you refuse a job that had 2000/2005 instances along with others?
It's not a simple answer.