[Info-vax] OpenVMS Hobbyist Notification

[Scott Dorsey]

Lee Gleason  <lee.gleason at comcast.net> wrote:
>On 3/6/2020 11:29 PM, David Moylan wrote:
>
>>    Users who wish to avail of HPE OpenVMS long term licenses are encouraged to
>>    purchase permanent licenses at standard prices. You may contact [Fellman, Jon]
>>    << >> for the same.
>> 
>
>   Is it even possible to buy VMS for VAX licenses anymore?

No, and that's okay.

The problem is that the licenses are not transferrable.  I have boxes of
old PAKs which were included when I bought old vaxen, but it's not legal
for me to use any of them (even though from a technical standpoint they
would all function).

If someone who owned the rights were to declare that old licenses were
transferrable, it would fix pretty much all of the problems with issuing
hobbyist licenses and fix the problems resulting from an inability to issue
new vax licenses.  Unfortunately that someone is likely HPE, and nobody
there really has any interest in the matter.  

Thus vax/vms is likely to become abandonware at this point.
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."