[Info-vax] VSI OpenVMS Community License

[Simon Clubley]

On 2024-03-27, Craig A. Berry <craigberry at nospam.mac.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/27/24 2:58 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2024-03-27, Craig A. Berry <craigberry at nospam.mac.com> wrote:
>>> On 3/27/24 8:43 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>
>>>> Are VSI packaging your Perl version in x86-64 VMS or are they maintaining
>>>> their own Perl port ?
>>>
>>> They are not maintaining their own port.
>>>
>> 
>> So IOW, VSI are packaging something you have created as part of their
>> base installation.
>
> They are using the standard distribution as well as some kit-building
> procedures I created.  This is all open source and they are not doing
> anything wrong here.
>

I didn't think they would be. What you say below matches what I thought
you were doing.

> What I have been doing for a long time that no one else has been doing
> is fairly frequent builds of the current development branch followed by
> fixing upstream whatever got broken since the last time I built.  That
> constant maintenance is why the standard distribution even works on VMS.
>

That is exactly my point. You are doing work for free that directly benefits
VSI. The fact you push your changes to a public distribution and VSI take
from that distribution, instead of from you directly, does not change that.

I should also point out that this is also the type of unseen thankless work
that nobody notices when everything is running ok, but which they notice
big time when that thankless work stops being done.

VSI are in serious danger of finding this out the hard way, especially given
the multiple open source packages people run on VMS.

>> Given what you have provided to VSI for free, you should not be having
>> to apply for anything. :-(
>
> Thanks for the note of support. I don't really feel that anybody owes me
> anything, but "why are you making it harder for me to help you?" is a
> question that's been rattling around in my head.
>

They owe you a bloody great big thanks for doing this work and for doing
it to a sufficiently high standard that they can directly package it as
part of a commercial product.

> I'm not sure what problem it is they are really trying to solve.
> Somehow there was too much interest and not enough "engagement"?  If
> Arne had put all his nice example code on a VSI-hosted wiki instead of
> his own web site would that have convinced them that the community is
> doing enough for VSI?
>

I just don't get it either. HPE (including HPE India) seemed to handle this
a _lot_ better than VSI are doing.

> Meanwhile I still don't have even an auto-reply from applying for a new
> community license.
>

I really hope by now that is on its way to rapidly being fixed. :-(

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.