[Info-vax] VMS Hobbyist Program

[David Goodwin]

On Saturday, July 18, 2020 at 2:52:48 AM UTC+12, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 7/6/2020 7:24 PM, David Goodwin wrote:
> > Thats certainly not required anymore. Presumably whoever authorized
> > the two year hobbyist licenses issued earlier has enough power to
> > authorize a 100 year hobbyist license, or one that just doesn't
> > expire at all.
> 
> Maybe. Maybe not. That depends on exactly what was approved
> years back.
> 
> > I wouldn't think use of hobbyist licenses in production is much of a
> > concern at this point either. Especially not for old HPE releases
> > which are going to be entirely unsupported soon anyway.
> > 
> > Surely saving old DEC/Compaq/HPE OpenVMS releases for ongoing
> > hobbyist use is achievable if the right people can be contacted.
> 
> Unlikely.
> 
> The people with authority to make such decisions are focused
> on HPE's bottom line.
> 
> If you can show XXX or maybe just XX millions of extra revenue,
> then they will be listening.

Why did they they issue a two year license at the start of this year when they announced they were ending the hobbyist program? Where was the extra revenue in that?

For that matter, why were they issuing Hobbyist licenses at all these last few years? OpenVMS was a dead operating system they were trying to get out of supporting. Where was the revenue in maintaining the hobbyist program?

If they were truly focused on nothing more than HPEs bottom line the hobbyist program would have been shutdown the day they announced they were killing OpenVMS.

I'll admit its unlikely anything will change but perhaps the hobbyist program survived as long as it did simply because someone with sufficient authority liked it and wanted it to continue whether it was making money or not?