[Info-vax] Final Orace release on VMS.

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <rol3g2$ofa$1 at dont-email.me>, Dave Froble
<davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes: 

> I'd think that VSI would do well to have some database products 
> associated with VMS.  I doubt they have the people to do much work on 
> such, but, just an "approved by VSI" could be helpful.

If they are developed for VMS, it would be too much work.  If they are 
VMS ports from elsewhere, someone will have to make sure that VMS 
changes get rolled back into the main distribution---probably also too 
much work, especially because some of the RMS disciples involved might 
not look favourably on supporting VMS which, in the words of VMS, is a 
crime against humanity.  (Yes, he really used those words, not in 
connection with VMS specifically, but in connection with proprietary 
software in general.)

I think that both VMS and Rdb could benefit from some sort of license 
which would be available to non-hobbyists and non-developers but at an 
affordable price point, but set up so that it can't be (ab)used by 
people paying the current, much more expensive, license prices.  There 
are more than a few folks with VMS experience, and some small companies 
might want to use VMS and perhaps Rdb, but if they can't even do a trial 
run in production without paying license prices which might exceed 
their entire revenue, then they won't even consider VMS (and Rdb).

Note that I am not talking about development, for which there are 
solutions.  However, who will develop something if he knows that in 
order to run it in production orders of magnitude more money must be 
paid for licenses?

Maybe have a license with a really low cost which expires after a year. 
If the same person/company wants to renew it, then the normal price
applies unless they demonstrate that their profit is less than, say, 5
times the license price, in which case they pay the really low fee or, 
say, 10 per cent of their profit, whichever is higher.