[Info-vax] The VSI Hobbyist program is Live!

[David Goodwin]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 11:35:59 AM UTC+12, Chris wrote:
> On 07/28/20 23:23, David Goodwin wrote:
> 
> > Yeah, this is more just reducing friction. Why bother potential users with extra work when its not actually required? Why make users renew their licenses every year? Is there actually a good business reason for doing this or is it simply being done because that's what DEC chose to do 20+ years ago.
> >
> > Given its being given away for free why not just bake a non-expiring non-commercial license into the ISO and just have a link to download the ISO on the website? Its a better experience for all involved.
> 
> Have no plans to use vms in the near future, but am grateful that VSI
> have done this and the registration requirement is not an issue. Had
> to do that for years to get copy of Solaris. Let's the vendor keep
> track of how many are interested and provides a marketing point for
> for possible follow up. It's a business, right ?.
> 
> Still, some always moan because it's not exactly what they wanted,
> free or not, but just seems a bit petulant and childish to me...

I'm not arguing from a "this isn't exactly what I wanted" perspective. I'm fine with filling out the form and installing PAKs and the current registration process is an improvement over the old one.

No, I'm arguing from a "competing with Linux is really really hard so lets make the new user process as painless as possible" perspective. And at least under the OpenVMS releases I've used entering license PAKs on a new install was anything but painless. Once you have the system up and running renewing the licenses wasn't so bad provided you did it before the previous ones expired but its still a chunk of work that I've never seen a good reason for.