On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 11:50 AM, David Boyes <[email protected]> wrote: >> IMO, FWIW (other acronyms omitted) I would love something like z/PDT for >> a home user. The "problem" that I perceive that IBM has with such a thing >> can be summed up as "somebody could use that to make money developing >> software and I won't get a fair cut." IOW, IBM doesn't think that a >>"personal copy" would only be for learning purposes, but would be >> "perverted" to actually make money. > > This discussion always makes me think of how other vendors respond to ideas > like this. > > DEC neatly solved this problem by making the "learning" copies of VMS capable > of only single > user on the system console -- unless you had permission for more. To go > multiuser or to login > anywhere but the physical machine console, you had to have a license that > authorized additional > users (1 to unlimited user). Historically, DEC (and later HP continued the > policy) was fairly liberal > with development licenses, and the user community responded by being adults > and not abusing > the privilege. > > IIRC IBM made some somewhat half-hearted attempts in the past to do something > like this but > got distracted by management changes and never followed thru. VMS still has a > fairly vibrant > software development community, and a lot of non-trivial tools are produced > by small vendors -- > very few CA/BMC/etc. scale vendors monopolizing the landscape. >
Don't forget the completely free hobbyist and educational licenses. DEC started it, Compaq expanded it, HP/HPE has continued it, and VSI, the current keepers of the code, will also be continuing it. Those licenses, good for real hardware and free/commercial emulators, let you do just about anything with OpenVMS and >100 layered products so long as it's non-commercial. It's not only great for learning but lets retirees keep doing what they love and stay in the user community. We've got retirees enjoying helping other users and writing/porting programs and nobody has to pay them a penny! They win, OpenVMS customers win, and HPE and VSI win. Everybody wins! Jim ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
