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

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 6/2/21 2:41 PM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <ihpdcdFkn8kU1 at mid.individual.net>, Bill Gunshannon
> <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> 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.  (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.
>>
>> The key here is "used to be".  Does anyone know of any academic use of
>> VMS today?
> 
> Not many.  But most people here think that VSI should try to get new
> customers.  Academia might not bring in that much profit, but it trains
> a new generation who want to use VMS.  DEC's biggest mistake was losing
> the academic market.

Don't blame DEC for that one.  VMS was firmly entrenched in
academia during DEC's era.  It was COMAPQ and HP that dropped
that ball.   Neither of them had a clue what went on in
academia or how it worked.  And, HP at least, was unwilling
to listen when suggestions were offered.


> 
>>>                       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.
>>>
>>>>> Yes.  But many commercial customers wouldn't have to pay anything and
>>>>> some non-commercial ones would.
> 
> Right; that's why I think that basic payment on computing power is not a
> good idea.
> 
>>>> 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.
>>
>> You mean like it did for the VAX?  Welcome to reality.
> 
> Right.  The whole discussion here is to try to avoid what happened to
> VAX, so a proposed solution which leads to a similar end result is a
> non-starter.
> 
>> The only true non-commercial use is hobbyists.  Non-profit,
>> Government use, Academic use are all just as commercial as a
>> bank, store or factory.
> 
> Depends on the definition, local laws, etc.

That's true.  By redefining the word anything can become non-commercial.

bill