[Info-vax] Use of media with licenses

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-11-08 18:23:48 +0000, David Turner said:

> That was my take on the matter
> So it literally comes down to the date you purchase the license
> I am placing an order for the "old" version of VMS 8.4.
> So in theory, since the patches have not been updated since APril 2016, 
> the license is good for all versions of 8.4 up to the date of the 
> purchase
> 
> HPE is totally unhelpful with this. I cannot even get hold of anyone 
> anywhere at HP (even Renew and Refurb) and they are unable to explain 
> or help with their policies
> 
> Methinks this is going to help VSI even more. It is a good thing for 
> the VMS world to have a company with a "vested interest" in this 
> product.

>From old, increasingly dim and distant recollection and very far from 
official...   OpenVMS licenses traditionally permitted use of any for 
OpenVMS releases and patches up to the date of purchase plus the 
initial warranty period, and any earlier releases.    Using releases 
older than the processor supported or releases that required other and 
earlier licenses — the old DECnet patches, for instance — wasn't ever 
dealt with very well.   This policy wasn't ever enforced in LMF, due to 
the lack of a software warranty update to the existing license PAK.    
This policy may well have changed, or I may well have remembered it 
wrong.   There have been some comments posted here and elsewhere around 
having to pay for the intervening support if you're relicensing a 
system, too.   Though I've not seen official notice of that — the 
practice in at least one old era used to involve a requirement to rebuy 
the software license to restart support, but that may well have changed.

The software license management (SLM) site disappeared five or six 
years ago — that was were the policies and such were documented — and 
maybe the folks at http://licensing.hp.com/slm/contact might still have 
that info.    http://g5w0675.atlanta.hp.com/slm/swl/view.slm?page=index 
was the old SLM site — in addition the policies, that was were the 
License Unit Requirements LURT tables and other details were published, 
too — and that site was excluded from the Internet Archive, 
unfortunately.

HPE has a few more years of selling Tukwila servers with V8.4 licenses, 
then it's all VSI.    Hopefully VSI gets this and other related issues 
sorted.  This and related practices are all badly stuck in the 1990s, 
unfortunately.


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