[Info-vax] Open source usage, Was Python and various libraries updated

[David Goodwin]

On Sunday, August 16, 2020 at 4:09:36 AM UTC+12, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> =?UTF-8?Q?g=c3=a9rard_Calliet?=  <gerard.calliet at pia-sofer.fr> wrote:
> >
> >VSI doesn't help encouraging collaboration on Open Source, and thinks 
> >there is not sufficient strength outside that can be usefull,
> >
> >The community - little for now - doesn't engage with strength on 
> >collaboration, and is discouraged by the lack of interest on 
> >collaboration by VSI.
> >
> >Something has to be done to unlock this. Community License is a very 
> >good point. Making more standardfully available Open Source developments 
> >will be the next good point.
> 
> For this to happen, VSI has to hire many more people.  Right now VSI is only
> a small handful of people, and they are all busy working on the x86 port
> and have little time left over for anything else.  Even very important things
> are being put on hold in order to get the x86 port finished.
> 
> VSI doesn't have additional people in part because finding good VMS people
> is difficult, and in part because VSI doesn't have a lot of revenue coming in.
> 
> If you want VSI to get engaged with the open source community, and to get
> them to hire a lot more people to get more stuff working under VMS and get
> some good marketing going to get people to think of VMS as a new and exciting
> thing instead of a dead or old thing--- then the BEST thing that you can do
> is to buy lots of VMS licenses and send them some money.

It turns out VSI does actually employ people working on porting Open-source things. This interview with Brett Cameron (VSI has an office here in NZ??) covers a range of subjects but from around 21 minutes he is discussing their various open source porting projects. Sounds like they have a team working specifically on porting stuff: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn23SrWNtmQ

Thinking about encouraging open source on OpenVMS a bit more, I wonder if temporary licenses are also a problem.

I've never had any guaranteed access to OpenVMS past the end date on my current yearly licenses. Probably HPE will issue me a new license when the current ones expire. Or maybe HPE discontinues the hobbyist program.

For me I can't actually rely on using it for anything important long-term at home because I can't rely on having access to licenses. So why commit time to learning how to develop for and porting things to OpenVMS instead of just using Linux which I *do* have guaranteed long-term access to?

Could be I'm just odd thinking about such things though when deciding where to spend my time. Certainly back in High School and University I wasn't so bothered - I had so much spare time I happily did the linux-from-scratch thing one week. Now I just want things to not break if I can't be bothered actively maintaining it for a few months because I've got other things on.