[Info-vax] The Doom of VAX VMS Hobbyist Licenses?

[Dave Froble]

On 7/19/2020 11:54 PM, rljenkin at gmail.com wrote:
> All,
>
> So despite months (since about the time of the last announcement email in march or so) of pinging the email (and their website) for the lab folks responsible for producing the last Hobbyist License I've never received a response back.  I know they've been slow in the past so I just held out hope they were just REALLY REALLY slow with alot of final requests.  Based on what I've read here, it seems like that's a common complaint...all email's go into a black hole.  A dead end.
>
> HPE appears to have washed their hands of it (all aspects of the Hobbyist program in any form).  So that's another dead end.
>
> I've also read that VSI has officially made it clear that they will not be doing anything related to the VMS for VAX.  So that's yet another dead end.
>
> My last VAX Hobbyist License has finally expired.
>
> So I ask the VMS Sages of the Internet, where does that leave me now as far as usability of OpenVMS for VAX and all the related compilers / software I accumulated and tinker with for my hobby?
>
> To put it bluntly, am I basically screwed?  :)
>
> Happy to hear any and all options.
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Rick
> rljenkin at gmail.com
>

Perhaps not.

First, without a license, you can still run VMS from the "console".  Not 
networking and such.

Read up thread, a post by Terry Kennedy.  Quite interesting.

John Malmburg mentioned having a share, and petitioning the HPe board of 
directors.  If a well thought out petition caught the attention of a 
civic board member, perhaps he/she would gather support from other 
directors and get us permanent hobbyist licenses.

A diligent searcher just might find on the web techniques for defeating LMF.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA  15486