[Info-vax] : Welcome to lockdown - HP limiting access to patches

[Rich Jordan]

On Aug 19, 7:57 am, Neil Rieck <n.ri... at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> > BTW, Solaris has recently gone down this route as well. I wonder if that
> > is where HP got this idea from.
>
> > Simon.
>
> It is funny you mentioned this because my employer owns hundreds of
> Solaris boxes which need patches and/or upgrades. Many managers are
> grumbling because Solaris used to be free but now the support fees
> will come out of their own local budgets. What is really odd is why
> people working for a large corporation would ever expect another large
> corporation to continue doing something for free. We all knew that SUN
> offered free software only to keep their hardware business alive (just
> as IBM has a line of free software for the same reason although they
> also have a line of not-free software) but free can only take you so
> far. Perhaps SUN should have given away free 12-month Solaris support
> with each new machine but then require a support contract after that.
>
> On a related note, I wonder if recent actions taken by Oracle (owners
> of SUN/Solaris) and HP will stimulate the next big wave of open-source
> operating system software. Linux anyone?
>
> Neil Rieck
> Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

You'd have a totally valid point if VMS itself was free, but it isn't;
in fact its one of the most expensive OS's out there, especially if
you start tacking on nice features like more user licenses or
clustering/rms journaling, etc.  The hobbyist program really doesn't
figure into this either since the license is restricted to non-
commercial use (I believe the free Solaris and IBM software were less,
or even unrestricted), and HP certainly doesn't make it easy to get
the media for current versions.

This is HP trying to squeeze blood from a turnip... those who can
afford software service contracts already have them.  A couple of our
customers still do, but mostly they are hardware support only, running
the most recent VMS version they had when they let software support
lapse.  Especially now, there is NO way in hell they could afford to
re-up support just in case HP ever releases an important ECO for their
VMS version.  Hobbyist users (I saw no mention of the program in the
FAQ) are screwed for any network-facing usage (firewall or not) if
they can't be sure that there aren't major problems with their base
unpatched releases.

And now with V8.4 coming out with numerous issues that make it feel a
bit more like a .0 release than it should have been, plus a few recent
patches also coming out with flaws and problems... an "interesting"
time to make such a change.

The net result of this decision, I think, will be one more 'pressure'
to move off of VMS, especially for the much despised and ignored small
customers still hanging on to it.  Not an immediate drop dead issue,
(unless some really nasty glaring exploitable issue is found), just
one more thing that HP is throwing at customers to make VMS less
desirable.  It is already damned hard to sell now and HP just made it
harder.

I sent my message about this to the interim CEO.