[Info-vax] vax vms licenses

[Craig A. Berry]

On 4/26/22 6:56 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 4/26/2022 2:35 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 4/26/2022 1:21 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2022-04-26, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:

>> Yes, I have.  Now address my question.  Can you name one VMS customer 
>> that intended to stay on VMS but then walked away because of the 
>> licensing?  Not someone complaining.  Someone who actually walked away.
> 
> Probably only a handful of people at VSI knows that number.
> 
> My best guess is that the number is very very small.
> 
> Why? Because if it was not then VSI would have changed
> license policy!

It mostly just hasn't come up yet.  Where I work we have done 3-year
contracts with VSI, first in 2017 and then renewed once in 2020, so 2023
will be the first time we will be up for renewal when *possibly* there
will be an opportunity to migrate to x86.  Naturally we got perpetual
licenses for our Itanium systems at the time since that was the only way
it was done then.

I made a point of ensuring in 2017 that our support contract included
upgrade rights to x86 when available.  Of course I never dreamed at the
time that five years later the upgrade still wouldn't be possible or
that the upgrade might actually be a downgrade in licensing terms.  If
the only path forward a year from now is moving to a time-limited x86
license, I can't imagine anyone (including me) wanting to bother with it.