[Info-vax] OpenVMS Hobbyist Notification

[Zane H. Healy]

In article <r3vp2e$12ha$1 at gioia.aioe.org> you wrote:
> A different question is hobbyist licenses for Alpha, Vax, and Itanium.  
> It would be nice for VSI to offer them, at least for Alpha and Itanium, 
> perhaps requiring that one run VSI VMS on them.  (And, yes, it was also 
> stated at the conference call that it would be possible to cluster Alpha 
> and x86, and was subsequently stated that this would very probably 
> require a VSI version of VMS on Alpha.)

Some random thoughts around this.  Right now, VMS in the hobbyist world
thrives on VAX, in part due to SIMH.  I've actually retired all my VAX
hardware except my DECnet router and virtualized it.  I have quite a bit of
Alpha hardware but have really only had one Alpha up at any given time.  How
many of us use VAX only software on our hobbyist systems?  Realistically for
the Alpha version of VMS to be viable, I think we need a good open source
Alpha emulator (I believe one is slowly being developed).  I'm personally
only VAX & Alpha at this point.  I've never had the option to run Itanium,
or a reason to make a serious effort.  I am *VERY* interested in the x86
port, but licensing is a very serious concern.

> As far as image is concerned, if VSI doesn't keep its word here, where 
> little effort and no revenue is involved, people might wonder whether 
> other promises will be kept.  It's just good PR.  And if hobbyists had 
> access to patches, like in the old days, VSI would have an army of 
> testers at no additional cost.

It would definitely be nice to see this.

> On the other hand, I think that most hobbyists would be willing to pay 
> for a non-hobbyist license if it were reasonably priced.  This doesn't 
> have to be the same as a commercial license for a big company.

Agreed.  I've spent non-trivial amounts of money since the Hobbyist v1 CD
was released on Documentation and CD's, in some cases, direct from Compaq
and HP, rather than eBay.

If nothing else, HPE has just managed to get me to post to comp.os.vms
twice in two days! :-)  It's been years since I've done that. :-)  It does
help that I got the email on a Friday night, so not working late. :-(

Zane