[Info-vax] OpenVMS hobbyist license renewal.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2021-01-30 13:10:04 +0000, leo.rams at protomation.com said:

> Yes indeed I am talking about the Montagar OpenVMS VAX Hobbyist Kit 
> (Objectnr. VAXKit) that was purchased in 2010 (!).

Various Montagar hobbyist kits existed.  The oldest contained OpenVMS 
VAX V5.5-2 and not one of the yet-older VAX/VMS versions, IIRC.

Kits from 2010, that prolly would have been the OpenVMS VAX V7.3 
release (the last OpenVMS VAX release). This assuming Montagar kept up, 
and AFAIK they did.

> Just to clarify my case a little bit more (also for the other readers):
> 
> - I will of course respect the license policies in place (we are partly 
> a software licensing company as well so we do not want illegal use of 
> our software as well).

As for using hobbyist licenses here, this looks like a pretty solid 
"nope" to me. Again, check with your company's legal folks.

> - The idea is just to preserve a legacy application currently running 
> on a MicroVAX 3400 by porting it to SIMH. This is NOT for commercial 
> purposes.

Preservation of a company's legacy application for a company's own 
archives does seem to be commercial usage to me.

> PS: We meanwhile have advanced 30 years and our applications are solely 
> running on Windows OS, although the foundation for this was laid by 
> using VAX/VMS.

So you ported. Lots of folks did. Fewer arrived than departed, too.

> - This is more my personal initiative as I was one of the developers in 
> those days.

For commercial usage... Create standalone backup copies of all storage 
devices. The system is then preserved, and can be reconstituted later.

Or use BACKUP /PHYSICAL, and create disk images. These disk images can 
then be loaded into an emulator, usually as backing storage for a 
virtual device.

I wouldn't bother with SIMH here (at all), just generate the Standalone 
BACKUP(s), and archive those. (I'd probably zip "-V" those BACKUP files 
and yes the quotes can be required, to preserve the BACKUP saveset 
metadata attributes. But the attributes can be reconstituted.)

That written, the existing software licenses on OpenVMS VAX or older 
VAX/VMS running on that MicroVAX 3400 will work within SIMH, and 
secondary-system usage was permissible for production usage while the 
primary is down per various of the software license agreements. 
Transferring the system contents will work. Create images of the 
existing mess, transfer those to the target environment with SIMH, 
configure the image files as virtual disks, and SIMH can then boot 
those images. HPE offered a license transfer—the cost years ago was 
around USD$300, though I do not know if that's still available—to 
migrate licenses from one system to another, permanently. Check with 
the lawyers, etc.

This assumes that the MicroVAX 3400 configuration has current, 
permanent, commercial licenses. Which is unclear, given the Montagar 
references earlier.

And pragmatically, given this app is to be archived, the backups will 
suffice for rebuilding the environment in the event that's ever needed.

And if you're looking to play with the past entirely unrelated to the 
above and beyond 2021 your free, non-commercial options are OpenVMS 
Alpha, OpenVMS I64, or OpenVMS x86-64 if/as/when available. There are 
Alpha emulators available.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC