[Info-vax] VSI licencing policy (again), was: Re: VSI has a new CEO

[John Wallace]

On 04/08/2021 13:19, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-08-03, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> On 8/3/2021 1:41 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, VSI do not seem to show any interest in addressing this.
>>>
>>> I wonder how much business it has cost them and how much it's going to
>>> cost them simply because a customer cannot allow this situation to occur.
>>>
>>> A business may love VMS and want to stay with it, but they are not
>>> going to allow the collapse of a vendor to be the collapse of their
>>> own business, even if that means moving away from VMS.
>>
>> On this we agree 100%.
>>
> 
> Even when people disagree with me on the other things I say, everyone
> still appears to agree with me on this.
> 
> Why can't VSI see just how strongly customers feel about this and why
> are they not doing anything to address this showstopping problem for
> keeping many people as VSI customers ?
> 
> Do VSI simply not understand the sheer strength of customer feeling
> about this ?
> 
> If you have your application source code, there are now solutions for
> porting your VMS applications, including its VMS-specific code, over
> to another operating system such as Linux.
> 
> How many people are now exploring this option as a direct result of
> VSI's new time-limited licences policy ?
> 
> Simon.
> 

Subscription-based licences for VMS date back to at least VMS 4.6 (in 
1987?) and V4.7, as can be seen from the VAX VMS Software Product 
Description of the day which has the part numbers.

Back then they were called Periodic Payment Licences and seem to have 
been associated with the then-new VAXBI series of machines.

I don't remember when they stopped being of interest to paying 
customers. In fact I don't remember when DEC's introduction of 
subscription based licencing *started* being of interest to VMS 
customers I knew, but presumably someone somewhere liked the idea, at 
least for a while.

Interesting to see that VSIVMS will not only have software licenced by 
subscription, there will be "enforcement mechanisms" as part of the OS.

It's a good job such enforcement mechanisms (including the likes of what 
used to be called DRM) have never ever in the history of digital 
restrictions management or production IT been vulnerable to fail in new 
and mysterious ways at the least convenient time possible and across the 
whole user base. Well, not very often anyway.