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

[John Reagan]

On Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 9:41:59 AM UTC-5, David Froble wrote:

> 
> I'm going to suggest that the entire PAK system with VMS be junked.  Now 
> before anyone has a hissy fit, consider.
> 
> Any legitimate commercial user of VMS is going to "follow the rules". 
> That's just the way it is, and if they are not, well, what has been lost?
> 

Unfortunately, that isn't the truth.  We had several legitimate commercial customers who wanted some license management facility to track all their licenses.  They were unsure of what they had (and perhaps HP was unsure as well?) and an architected solution to manipulate licenses was invented.  The additional aspects of version dates, release notes, etc. was all to help customers stay 'legal'.  The added 'benefit' of using LMF as a way to prevent piracy was a secondary goal.  Later on, we realized that LMF also allowed new ways to license/sell products with things like per-user licensing, per-node licensing, icap, etc.

John (who was part of the original group who designed these things)