[Info-vax] vax vms licenses

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/26/2022 5:48 PM, David Goodwin wrote:
> Perpetual licenses only solve the problem in the short term. Regardless of what
> VSI does the customers they have today will over time leave (out of business,
> whatever OpenVMS was doing is no longer needed, etc). VSI needs to win new
> customers to replace those that leave. Perpetual licenses alone won't encourage
> *anyone* to switch from Linux.
> 
> Closed source with perpetual licenses guarantees that one day it will no longer
> be possible to buy new licenses. It guarantees that one day security updates
> will no longer be available. It guarantees that one day when those hidden
> security vulnerabilities are discovered no one will be legally allowed to fix them.

There is no guarantee that closed source will go EOL. It seems
likely that at some point in time customers will want
something newer and the product be dropped due to lack of demand.
But in theory a closed source product could continue indefinitely.

And it is not really that different for open source. It could
continue indefinitely. But most likely at some point in time
users will want something newer and the open source project
dies from lack of business backing and lack of volunteer
interest.

Arne