[Info-vax] Eisner's PAKs, was: Re: Can't get hobbyist licenses from Openvmshobbyist

[MG]

Stephen Hoffman schreef op 8-jan-2015 om 03:12:
> This is yet another thing that HP and VSI will have to sort out

Definitely... and, better yet, they need to seriously consider
abolishing these ridiculous PAKs.

It's one thing to license a couple of special features in an
operating system, but the way PAKs work and how they are
implemented/work is just going to deter people.  Especially in
VMS, whereas in Digital/Tru64 UNIX the PAKs were at least a bit
more forgiving and allowed a working unlicensed TCP/IP stack
(amongst a number of things), to make your life a bit easier.

Imagine how many OpenVMS Hobbyists Program partakers (and
amongst them, people evaluating VMS, who might have perhaps
been interested in commercial VMS usage) simply prematurely
gave up, or lost interest, due to the tedious PAK acquirement
and loading procedure; especially those completely new to VMS,
without knowing all the ins and outs.  (It also didn't help
that for a while the PAKs were delivered in with incorrect
line-termination.)

Since IPF releases, the total number of required PAKs may
have been reduced, /but/ there are still far too many if you
ask me.  (For instance, there are separate PAKs for individual
languages/localizations... I mean, seriously!?)

Linux distributions, *BSD flavors, OS X (save for separate
license management systems for certain third party software),
large commercial UNIX/-derived operating systems (like SunOS,
IRIX, HP-UX, etc.) surely never nagged its users with anything
of this nature or a similar scale and at most only had some
parts license/key restricted.

  - MG