[Info-vax] State of the OpenVMS hobbyist program?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2019-11-22, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> On 11/22/2019 8:19 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>
>> Even if David doesn't care about the legal issues, I hope he realises
>> that comments like this harm the chances of a VSI hobbyist program
>> ever existing when people look at the above types of comments and
>> wonder if trying to provide free access to VMS to hobbyists is worth it.
>>
>
> David is TOTALLY legal.  The VAX license was bought and paid for, 
> registered in my company's name.  Alpha developer license is legal.
>

I said nothing about what you do in your business David. I have assumed
that you use normal paid for commercial licences in your business.

I was purely referring to your comments about what you feel it is
acceptable for hobbyists to do in some circumstances.

> I do care about "legal", and the rights of vendors.
>
> What I'd rather not see is VAX/VMS becoming unusable by hobbyists.  Why 
> should such a thing happen?
>

For the same reasons that the legal situation around hobbyist licences
for the PDP-11 have become unclear.

> As for moral considerations, when something is shared, then later taking 
> away that sharing is, in my mind, very immoral.  When a company develops 
> and makes available an OS, and urges people to use said OS to develop 
> software, then those users have a stake in the software.  What could be 
> more immoral than the vendor then saying "Ok, we got you to invest time 
> and money, and now we're jerking the rug out from under you".  Note that 
> the current customers would have a perpetual license, but, where do they 
> get new people to use or work on their software, if new people cannot 
> get access to the OS.
>

The new customers move onto the new thing the vendor is selling instead
of the thing the existing customers are using.

For example, new DEC customers were sold the VAX (and then Alpha) unless
they _really_ wanted the PDP-11 (and then eventually the PDP-11 was no
longer in the sales price list at DEC).

Using your arguments above, DEC should have continued selling the PDP-11
even when there was no longer a viable market for it. However, the market
changed and so the PDP-11 range was no longer viable for new customers so
DEC did the right thing and started pushing alternatives to the PDP-11
(including the VAX) instead.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.