[Info-vax] OT: Rob Short: Operating System Evolution

[John Wallace]

On Jan 7, 2:03 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
wrote:
> John Wallace wrote:
> > On Jan 6, 10:55 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
> > wrote:
> >> John Wallace wrote:
> >>> On Jan 6, 4:50 am, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> Bob Koehler wrote:
> >>>>> In article <oe6dnbsExJlqqtzWnZ2dnUVZ_uCdn... at giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net> writes:
> >>>>>> I wouldn't expect ANY word processor to be a huge success on VMS.  It's
> >>>>>> damned difficult to run a WYSIWYG processor on a system that natively
> >>>>>> can output only ASCII text.  You can run it on a workstation but I think
> >>>>>> it's a great deal cheaper to run it on a PC.
> >>>>>    Why in the world do you think VMS "can output only ASCII text"?  I've
> >>>>>    been using other data formats on VMS since 1980.
> >>>> Which tools in VMS (not layered products) output selectable fonts and
> >>>> selectable type sizes?  I can do a lot with TeX and LaTeX but that's not
> >>>> native VMS.
> >>> Let's assume that you consider DECwindows Motif not a layered product.
> >>> Is that OK?
> >> No, it's not OK!  It's a layered product, separately licensed and, of
> >> course, expensive!  If the license had not been included with my Alpha
> >> Station 200 I couldn't afford it!
>
> > "Separately licensed ... expensive"
> > "Included with my AlphaStation"
>
> > You want it both ways, best of luck with that.
>
> I don't want it "both ways"!  I was simply observing that commercial
> licenses, as opposed to hobbyist licenses, cost a great deal of money.
> My Alphastation came with VMS, and NAS-150 (I think it was 150. . . .)
>
> If I had picked my system out of a dumpster and had to buy the suite of
> licenses I would not be able to afford them.  I think a FORTRAN license
> would cost me something like $1500-$2000 if I had to pay list price.
>
> There are special pricing programs for hobbyists and developers but it's
> not quite the same as having licenses that are unrestricted and good
> until the system hits the dumpster.

OK, one more time.

The vast majority of real-world commercial AlphaStation customers with
a Motif or NAS150 licence would not have paid "a great deal of money"
for it, because it would have been part of the bundle when they bought
the system, and it would have been at a very very very attractive
bundled price, much less than the standalone price. As I said earlier,
buying and paying for one (NAS150) standalone is a different (and
fortunately much rarer) can of worms, and cannot really be used as a
basis for any meaningful price comparisons.

The same obviously cannot be said for things like FORTRAN compiler
licences, but as you know, folks in commercial software development
businesses could get massive discounts on the development tools via an
annually-renewable program whose name I forget, as could academic
folks via DECcampus (?). For non-hobbyist folk not in those categories
then yes a system-wide licence for e.g. FORTRAN would have cost a lot,
but a limited-users or named-users licence would have been a lot
cheaper and addressed a lot of commercial requirements where there
were a handful of developers on a big box.

Incidentally, if FORTRAN is your thing, have you seen the price of
Intel FORTRAN, which if I remember rightly is where Steve Lionel ended
up?