[Info-vax] upgrading to VSI VMS---and back

[Dave Froble]

On 1/6/2022 6:51 AM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> I want to upgrade to VSI VMS.  However, I'm worried that---like those
> with commercial VSI licenses---at some point licenses will no longer be
> available (at reasonable cost).  I am somewhat unusual as a hobbyist in
> that I actually bought some commercial licenses back in the day, so if
> worst comes to worst I can continue to run a hobbyist cluster (though
> only with a couple of small machines with an old version of VMS).

Lets take a look at those "purchased VMS licenses" ...

Exactly what version of VMS did you purchase?  Assuming that you've been using 
hobbyist licenses, that's over now.  Will you be now using those "purchased VMS 
licenses"?  If so, what version of VMS did you purchase, and what version of VMS 
are you running?

If you are not aware, understand that using newer versions of VMS required you 
to purchase each new version as they were released.  Have you done so?

What irony if one of the most rigorous defenders of IP and copyright on c.o.v 
turns out to be one of the biggest offenders ...

:-)

>  If I
> upgrade to VSI with the community license, the only way to fall back on
> that would be to restore the old 8.4 system disks.  That would also mean
> that any code which makes use of new features would no longer work.

And also perhaps would be illegal ...

> Something of a compromise would be a mixed HPE/VSI cluster.  I don't
> think that that is supported (probably not much of an issue for a
> hobbyist cluster), but it won't even technically work, right?  That also
> means that a mixed-cluster rolling upgrade won't work, so the upgrade is
> more difficult than usual, and the downgrade as well.

My understanding is that the SCS protocol for x86 will be different, thus it 
won't work.  There is to be a patch or such for Alpha and itanic for this, but 
not for VAX.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
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