[Info-vax] OpenVMS Hobbyist Notification

[caoimhe at pitbulluk.org]

On Saturday, 7 March 2020 14:39:27 UTC, Zane H. Healy  wrote:
> 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.

I'm entirely SIMH for VAX these days. After HPE's email, my plans (often stalled) to  go back to real VAX or try some real Alpha hardware are now on hold until something concrete happens.

I don't think I'll be interested in the x86 port. I don't imagine VSI will be interested in writing device drivers for the plethora of cheaper desktop motherboards and PCIe adaptors most hobbyists will go for. It's going to be high-end mostly, although hyper-v and vmware driver development might work. Besides which, the "State of the Port" seems almost laughable at present. 

> > 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.

I'm in two minds about this. I'm a hobbyist user. I don't sell anything I might produce unlike a commercial enterprise where a licence is a relatively small operating cost offset by profits.

> 
> 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

On an upbeat note, I feel a lot better than I did when I first read the message from HPE.... for a few reasons, one of which is that I managed to write some more code in Bliss-32. This morning, I thought I might not bother ever again.

Keith