[Info-vax] OpenVMS Hobbyist Notification

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <r4639p$ngl$3 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley
<clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes: 

> On 2020-03-06, Kevin Monceaux <Kevin at RawFedDogs.net> wrote:
> > Well, this doesn't sound encouraging.  Is VSI picking up the OpenVMS
> > Hobbyist license ball that HPE is dropping?
> 
> Based on the vibes coming from VSI management, I extremely doubt it.

I'm puzzled by the about-face because at the original conference call, 
they sounded very positive.  Sure, that was early, things change, etc., 
but in that case why weren't they more non-committal back then?

> VSI seem to be taking a very short term attitude to this and a rather
> counter-productive one as they don't seem to see the long term benefits
> of maintaining an active hobbyist program.

Of course, hobbyists want to be hobbyists.  But it has to make sense for 
VSI.  Hobbyists are essentially unpaid testers, and often run new 
patches and so on as soon as they are available, while production 
systems sometimes run known-to-work (for them) software rather than 
taking a risk.  Give hobbyists access to patches again, like used to be 
the case, and even more will get tested.  

> I don't know if VSI seem to think that everyone will start running VMS
> for free in production if they allow hobbyist licences, or if it's some
> other reason why VSI have gone back on their promise of a hobbyist program.

That would be interesting to know.  But how many paying customers does 
VSI have?  They presumably have support contracts, which also cost 
money.  And I don't think that any new commercial customers will run on 
hobbyist licenses.

At least issue them for Alpha.

> Even _IBM_ has an active Master the Mainframe program that allows people
> to learn z/OS for goodness' sake. (Thanks to whoever pointed me to that BTW.)

Right.  And income from Linux is orders of magnitude more than for VMS, 
and not only is the software free but it doesn't need a license.  I'm 
not saying that VMS should go that route, but it shows that one can make 
money even if there are no license fees involved.