[Info-vax] VSI OpenVMS Hobbyist Program Announced.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 6/14/2019 9:20 AM, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
> To be blunt, this is a huge step down from the HP program for us that 
> have our own compatible hardware and want to run it 24/7 or at least not 
> have to redo the license every 180 days.
> 
> I really hope this is not the last word on VSI Hobbyist licenses.

The page clearly state "Student" several times.

That, the form of the download kit and the material clearly indicates
that this is targeting new VMS users not traditional VMS hobbyists.

Let me for fun just quote from page 5-6 of the material:

<quote>
Default Directory and Directory Listing
For now, let’s see where we are. In OpenVMS, the current directory is 
known as the
default directory because any file specification that doesn’t include 
the directory name
references a file in the default directory. So, let’s find out where we 
are by asking the
system what the default directory is. The command for this is “SHOW 
DEFAULT”:
$ SHOW DEFAULT
SYS$SYSDEVICE:[STUDENT]
This shows us that we are in the SYS$SYSDEVICE:[STUDENT] directory.
• The string SYS$SYSDEVICE: is the device name, which is usually a hard 
disk.
SYS$SYSDEVICE: is a logical name which points to the disk from which the
system has booted, in our case DKA0: Therefore SYS$SYSDEVICE:[STUDENT]
is the same as DKA0:[STUDENT].
• The string STUDENT is the directory name. If we were in a 
subdirectory, it would
be shown like this:
$ SHO DEF
SYS$SYSDEVICE:[STUDENT.SUBDIRECTORY]
As you can see from the example above, commands can be abbreviated. SHO 
DEF is
short for SHOW DEFAULT. In general, a command may be abbreviated as long 
as the
abbreviated command has enough letters to be unique. So, the COPY 
command may be
abbreviated as COP, but not as CO (since CO could also mean, for 
example, COBOL).
The system will warn you if your abbreviation is invalid:
$ CO
%DCL-W-ABVERB, ambiguous command verb – supply more characters
\CO\
Now, let’s find out what files we have in our directory:
$ DIRECTORY
Directory SYS$SYSDEVICE:[STUDENT]
LOGIN.COM;1
Total of 1 file.
So, we have one file in our directory: LOGIN.COM;1. Let’s ignore the ;1 
for now and call
this file LOGIN.COM. The .COM extension indicates that this file is a 
DCL command
procedure.
</quote>

:-)

It makes perfect sense to me that VSI prioritize making VMS available
for new users over making VMS available to the classic hobbyist crowd.

There is simply more business opportunities in getting some 25 yo's to
try boot and login to VMS than to provide free VMS licenses to
some people that as a hobby play with 10/20/30/40 yo HW.

That said then I also hope that VSI will provide a more
traditional hobbyist license.

Arne