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

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

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.