[Info-vax] A new suggestion to handle the temporary production licences problem

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2021-06-02 kl. 13:17, skrev Andrew Brehm:
> On 02/06/2021 10:08, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> Den 2021-06-02 kl. 09:23, skrev Andrew Brehm:
>>> On 31/05/2021 21:54, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>>>> In article <s92qfa$7o3$1 at dont-email.me>, Dave Froble
>>>> <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> My idea is the same as it's been for years.  Do away with license PAKs,
>>>>> allow anyone to run VMS, require support for any commercial use of VMS.
>>>>> This would avoid all the issues about drop dead dates.
>>>>
>>>> How would you actually check whether commercial users had support?  Big
>>>> commercial users?  Sure.  Commercial users with one VMS system left?
>>>> Probably not.  And what about other people offering support, openly or
>>>> not, in return for money?  Could VSI prevent that?  Yes, someone who
>>>> needs important patches will pay for support.  But if you are relying on
>>>> that, then you will have unpatched VMS support in the wild at least
>>>> among non-commercial users (or, rather, all who don't want to pay for
>>>> support, whether commercial or not).  But old systems which haven't been
>>>> touched for years or decades probably won't be patched anyway.
>>>>
>>> I think all of that is too complicated.
>>>
>>> Perhaps the easiest distinction between commercial and non-commercial 
>>> use is system specs.
>>>
>>> Make OpenVMS freely available to everyone and let it use up to 4 cores 
>>> and up to 8 GB of RAM for free, then demand payment for more.
>>>
>>> This will allow everyone to use VMS for development and testing and will 
>>> make serious customers pay. Likewise, if VSI goes away or someone 
>>> forgets to renew support, VMS would simply collapse to using 4 cores and 
>>> 8 GB only, keeping production system running but very slowly...
>>
>> We have 1 core and 4 GB RAM, and the system is quite fast.
>> And I do not consider a system supporting production in the main
>> factory of a leading producer of forrest/garden equipment, as "small".
>>
>> So no, I do not beleive in that solution.
> 
> I don't think there will be too many systems like that in the near future. 
> As cores and memory become cheaper and cheaper, systems with 1 core and 4 
> GB of RAM will become a faint memory.

You select the config that is "good enough". And why wouldn't you if
you get it for free. Is it not that all 1 or 2 CPU Alphas suddenly
need a 4+ CPU/core system that is also way faster per core.

No, I do not beleive in your suggestion.