[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-12-13 21:17:16 +0000, Milton Baar said:

> Or perhaps just granting an educational or discounted license...there 
> is plenty of inexpensive hardware around...and I don't think an 
> endowment would be either needed or likely.
> 
> This could be a way for OpenVMS to be back in the educational sector 
> with the possibly positive flow-on effects.  I don't think that the IBM 
> arrangement is an act of charity on their behalf, they understand the 
> benefits as DEC once did.

What would change here that would encourage universities, schools and 
trade schools to adopt OpenVMS?  This given that free educational 
licenses have been available for ~twenty years. There does seem more 
involved here than offering free software licenses.

Shipping a substantial endowment to any University seems unlikely at 
present.  This given the other potential uses for that same endowment, 
with VSI beavering away on the OpenVMS x86-64 production release, with 
a plethora of projects pending to preserve the installed base, and then 
with a pick of projects intended to pique more people—potential new 
end-customers, students, and partners—beyond the OpenVMS installed 
base.    There's more than a little work pending with existing 
partners, and around commencing marketing and communications programs, 
too.

I'd expect most any school to ask for a substantial endowment covering 
hardware, software, support and very likely some or all of the 
associated staffing, and this assuming that the school is even 
interested in discussions with VSI around OpenVMS.  From the 
perspective of the school, ponder too the current state of OpenVMS.  
Students are or will need to be familiar with IDEs, and with libraries 
and frameworks and tooling that are well beyond what is available on 
OpenVMS, too.  VSI is working on that.

To borrow the business plan from the Underwear Gnomes, what's your 
"phase 2" here?   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zc4bGkU05o    But as 
has been mentioned, better to make your "Phase 2" case to the folks at 
VSI.





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