[Info-vax] VAX VMS going forward

[Simon Clubley]

On 2020-07-17, Alice Wyan <finitud at gmail.com> wrote:
> If I understand the situation correctly, HPE is completely dropping support
> for VAX VMS, but the rights haven't been transferred to VSI. This means
> starting next year VMS on the VAX is essentially abandoned.
>

HPE dropped support for VAX/VMS a long time ago, but continued to issue
hobbyist licences for it.

What is new is that HPE are no longer issuing hobbyist licences, including
those for VAX/VMS. (That should have been at the end of this year, but it
appears to have happened already.)

> If HPE is no longer going to be making money out of it, what would be
> stopping them from selling it/give the rights away to, say, a hobbyist
> collective that could be set up to preserve this system? I guess there'd be
> quite a legal mess of rights behind the old code, but... would it be a doable
> thing? What sort of money could we be talking about to get this sort of
> transfer done?

The "legal mess" is one of the reasons why this is unlikely to happen.

Do HPE even still have people available with enough VAX/VMS knowledge
to navigate the "legal mess" from their side of this ?

HPE are also unlikely to sell it or give the rights away for various
other reasons. At best you might get them to licence the rights to
someone else as they did with VSI for Alpha/Itanium/x86-64 and DEC
did with Mentec for the PDP-11.

The most viable course of action (but still extremely unlikely) is for
HPE to maintain all control over VAX/VMS but to issue a final set of
non-terminating licences. That is also unlikely because there is no
motivation for HPE to invest the time, resources and legal costs in
investigating this option.

Simon.

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