[Info-vax] vax vms licenses

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/27/2022 1:16 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 4/27/2022 12:00 PM, John Dallman wrote:
>> In article <f83619d5-0856-458a-a044-945dbb203e11n at googlegroups.com>,
>> dgsoftnz at gmail.com (David Goodwin) wrote:
>>> This one I imagine is pretty easy to deal with at this point. HPE
>>> has no further use for OpenVMS - its only remaining value is in
>>> whatever fees they're collecting from VSI.
>>
>> It has another importance in the strange world that corporate board
>> members live in. While they're getting money from VSI, they can make a
>> case that they're exploiting the OpenVMS intellectual property. If they
>> open-source it, a case can be made by shareholders *and their lawyers*
>> that they're discarding an asset.
> 
> What knowledge or evidence do you have that HPe is still getting any 
> money from VSI?
> 
> I've never heard of any such payments, but then again, perhaps such 
> would not be common knowledge.

It seems likely that VSI has paid something, but whether it was
a one time lump sum or an annual amount or a percentage of license
revenue or the symbolic 1 dollar or something else has as far
as I know not been public disclosed.

Note that the main driver for the spinoff was probably not the
money. Whatever VSI paid must have been peanuts in the HPE
world. HPE wanted out of the VMS business, but they wanted
to get out without reputational damage and lawsuits for not
meeting obligations. Having VSI take over VMS allowed HPE
to do a graceful exit.

Arne