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

[Dave Froble]

On 6/2/2021 7:26 AM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <ihp7s1Fjmf6U1 at mid.individual.net>, Andrew Brehm
> <andrew at netneurotic.net> writes:
>
>
>>> I can think of many, many commercial applications which could get by
>>> with far fewer resources, say a webserver running a webshop.  And I can
>>> think of non-commercial use which needs more resources, such as number
>>> crunching in academia.
>
>> And academic number crunching IS a commercial application and can
>> justify buying a licence. Why not? VSI could sell such licences for free
>> if this is required.
>
> No, it is not commercial.

You're being a bit too narrow with the term "commercial".  Think instead 
of a resource that normally costs money.

Academic or otherwise, number crunching for some purpose will cost, 
regardless of the vendor.

>  (It is not hobbyist use, at least in most
> cases, but definitely not commercial.)  DEC and VMS used to be big in
> the academic market.  It is a big mistake to think that there are only
> hobbyists and huge commercial users.  In-between there are academic
> users, non-profit-organization users, small businesses, self-employed
> people, etc.

There are two broad uses.

1) For some purpose which has value.  Call this "commercial".

2) A purpose with no value, other than entertainment(sometimes), 
education, and such.

It should be up to VSI, IBM, and such to determine whether a usage 
should require support fees.  Don't get hung up on the word 
"commercial", which has different meanings to different folks.

>>> Yes.  But many commercial customers wouldn't have to pay anything and
>>> some non-commercial ones would.
>>
>> The first group will likely become smaller and smaller as time passes
>
> So with that the possibility of running VMS for free, e.g. for
> hobbyists, vanishes as well.

Your pet "ox" getting gored, huh?

>> and cores become cheaper. And the second group can always get a licence.
>
> Sure, but the whole point is that non-commercial customers shouldn't
> have to pay.

Why not?  They are using someone else's labor, resources, and such, just 
as "commercial" users do.  The "free" usage has much more to do with the 
benefits to the vendor, ie; exposure of their products so as to induce 
more "commercial" usage.

>>>> 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.
>>>
>>> Certainly not all production systems.
>>
>> Perhaps not, but the majority or at least some. It would still be
>> better than a complete halt as dictated by the current process.
>
> You can't define a production system as "more powerful than X" then,
> when the license no longer works, limit the functionality to "less
> powerful than X".
>
>> The actual comparison is the actual comparison when the project is
>> started? Do we use VMS or do we use Linux? What does each cost?
>
> For new products.  What about moving to a different platform?
>

This whole discussion is a problem for VSI, and it is up to VSI to 
resolve it to customer's satisfaction.  Not something for c.o.v to 
remedy.  If they do not satisfy the customers, long term, all they will 
have is short term customers.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
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