[Info-vax] VSI OpenVMS Community License

[Dan Cross]

In article <uu2dqu$35k4u$1 at dont-email.me>,
Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>On 3/27/2024 9:03 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <utvdak$2bpcm$1 at dont-email.me>,
>> Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>> Well, if it was/is that much work, then should that not indicate that there has
>>> been plenty of interest?
>>
>> One would think!
>>
>>> And if so, why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
>>
>> I hate to be that guy, but...but it must be asked: were the eggs
>> laid by that goose really all that golden?  Were they seeing any
>> return on it?  My guess is, "no, not really."
>
>My perspective has been that anything that gets or keeps interest in VMS is a 
>good thing for VMS.

Fundamentally I agree with you, but with the caveat that those
things must be tempered by their costs.  Here, I suspect VSI was
faced with a cost that they didn't feel was worth it; they chose
a path to address that, where you and I both agree that another
path would have been superior.

>>> Or, if there is such interest, perhaps some beancounter (everyone knows I
>>> dislike beancounters, right?) sees it as a way to milk some money from the interest?
>>>
>>> The community license seemed like someone understood.  What happened to that
>>> understanding?
>>
>> It's been said before in this newsgroup, by me and others, that
>> the current approach is non-competitive.  It may be the only
>> possible approach for business and legal reasons, but the idea
>> of generating expanded sales around a closed-source, obscure
>> commercial system was always exceedingly unlikely.  Serving only
>> the legacy market is, by definition, finite.
>
>While I seem to consider the world running on Unix/Linux/WEENDOZE could be a 
>more dangerous place.  Some might agree since IBM seems to be still doing well. 
>Yeah, they will run Linux, but, I think that is more marketing than anything else.

I think IBM managed to leverage their installed base and lock-in
to weather some pretty bad storms.  More power to them, but VMS
just isn't in that same position.

>> And I say that as someone who actually really likes VMS and
>> would like to see it remain available!  I dislike software
>> monocultures on a number of grounds, but the reality is that
>> we're heading towards one.  It's a real shame.
>
>Well, if we get Trump, will anything matter?  Good bye constitution, hello King 
>Donald the First.  Someone was just pointing out on TV this morning that when 
>facisim (I can't spell it) comes to America, it will be carrying a US flag and a 
>bible.  Ok, off topic ...

You get absolutely no argument from me on this.  The "When
fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and
carrying a cross" 'quote' is often attributed to Sinclair Lewis,
possibly in his novel, "It Can't Happen Here."  But it's not in
that novel, and there's no evidence he actually said it.  It is
very much in keeping with the theme of the book, though.

>> Personally, I think the way to address this would have been to
>> simply do away with PAKs and time-limited licenses entirely.
>
>Gee, someone mentioned this years ago.  Oh,  that was me ...

:-D

	- Dan C.

>> The idea that commercial users would expose themselves legally
>> and operationally by using licenses that come out of pakgen or
>> whatever never struck me as particularly evidence-based; maybe
>> back in the day when small ma' and pa' operations were buying
>> a microvax and putting it in the back office to run bookkeeping,
>> but those days are long gone.  Legacy customers in the fortune
>> $n$-whatever are going to maintain their licenses because the
>> risk cost of not doing so outweighs the cost of staying on the
>> up-and-up.  So what's the point of all the overhead at the OS
>> level?
>
>Indeed!