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

[MG]

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) schreef op 19-jan-2015 om 22:23:
> Isn't the serial number to keep people from distributing PAKs to
> others? Yes, this GNU-bullshit "if I can copy it then I have the
> right to distribute it" is still working against people who try
> to make a living by producing something immaterial like software.

If you're worried about loss of revenue, people not being rewarded
for their immaterial fruits of labor, livelhood and so forth...
then why are you in favor of PAKs?  PAKs have been deterring new
users (read: potential customers).  Many people I knew, who were
interested in VMS for its features and functionalities were put
off by the ridiculous PAKs and lost interest.

I'm not the biggest fan of GNU (nor the GPL, which you were
obviously referring to) myself, but you're mischaracterizing them
by claiming they're endorsing or even engaging in piracy.  The GPL
license only pertains to anything licensed under it.

More importantly, PAKs are _not_ preventing piracy /at all/, they
are only deterring potential new users and annoying existing ones.
Because, as you may have noticed (already years ago), as it was
even shared here on comp.os.vms, there's a LMF PAK generator.
Before that, people used other tricks (so I read) to overcome
LMF/PAKs.  That makes a lot more sense, from a piracy perspective,
than if paying customers were "distributing PAKs to others" (which
would even be easier to track back to them, thus not very wise...
to put it very gently).

It's an open secret that most of the income for VMS was based on
support contracts and such and whoever didn't or (e.g.) couldn't
afford a contract was probably not large enough to cause much
revenue loss to begin with.  That's how it works for many other,
similar, operating systems, too.

  - MG