[Info-vax] Entitled attitudes, was: Re: vax vms licenses

[gah4]

On Wednesday, February 24, 2021 at 11:10:26 AM UTC-8, chris wrote:

(snip)

> The fundamental problem here is not vms specific, but applies to any 
> software for which there is no longer support, nor way to purchase and 
> legally run it. Dec had rigid licensing conditions, whereas with Sun, 
> for example, the right to use the os version came with the machine. 
> Not separately licensed, so it's fine to run older Solaris versions 
> on your Sparc 20, for example. This is an attitude that fosters 
> goodwill from users, many of whom go to work every day and specify 
> new equipment. Trading off loss to the vendor vs from unauthorised use 
> against possible sales benefit, it's pretty clear which attitude is 
> better for any business long term. 

That might have been for SunOS (at least it was for academic use).

I do remember for Solaris (maybe about 2.4 or so) that it was free for
research and development, but not for other commercial use.
(At the time it was very popular for web servers.)

That was about the time of Solaris-x86, where you didn't buy a machine
from Sun to include an OS license with.  I believe now you can download
them freely, but are supposed to have a service contract for commercial use.

Free for hobby or academic use.