Re: HP hobbyist license

[Craig A. Berry]

On May 15, 2012, at 6:30 PM, John E. Malmberg wrote:
> 
> The problem is that as Nicholas Clark is being paid for this work, it may not 
> be legal to do it on a system licensed with Hobby licenses.

The only thing somewhat relevant I can find in my hobbyist license says, "Use 
of the Licensed Computer is ONLY FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USES (e.g., home use).  As 
such, you may not use the Licensed Computer for any business purposes 
whatsoever, e.g., to develop applications for resale, to do business 
accounting, etc."

The problem with trying to apply this 1980s-style business model here is that 
we have a third party that makes very serious but entirely free software and 
wants to make it work on everything it can get its hands on, including a tiny 
proprietary operating system called OpenVMS owned by a giant company called HP. 
 

Producing free software is certainly not for resale by definition.  And it's 
not "to do business accounting, etc." because what we're talking about is 
writing, testing, and generally maintaining free software, which doesn't seem 
to me is a "business purpose" at all in the sense envisioned by the hobbyist 
license.  

And someone getting paid by a third party to help HP have better software on 
its systems doesn't *seem* like something HP would want to prevent, but it's 
hard to tell.  The developer program (DSPP or whatever it's called now) doesn't 
cover this situation at all.  It's somewhat ambiguous whether the hobbyist 
program covers it.  It could be worse; it could be IBM, but I digress.

I think the best near-term solution is if Nicholas can get his access to the HP 
open source systems up and running.  If that doesn't work post haste, I will do 
what I can to raise awareness, or raise a stink, or whatever seems to need 
raising to get things done.  

Craig A. Berry
mailto:craigbe...@mac.com

"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
 difficult than getting in."
 Brad Leithauser

Re: HP hobbyist license

[John E. Malmberg]

On 5/15/2012 12:52 PM, Carl Friedberg wrote:

At this very moment, all 3 of my VMS servers are unreachable,
but normally they are accessible.

I have two (pretty ancient) AlphaServer 800's, single 500mhz
processor, 2 Gb memory, running recent VMS with hobbyist
licenses. I also have an Itanium RX2600 dual-core box
running OpenVMS 8.4 (similar to the one Craig uses, I suspect).

All of these are available to perl developers. Send me an e-mail
and I will set up an account for you.


The problem is that as Nicholas Clark is being paid for this work, it 
may not be legal to do it on a system licensed with Hobby licenses.


As part of an offline conversation, Nicholas Clark is getting access to 
the HP Open Source cluster, which should cover the licensing issue.


Regards,
-John

RE: HP hobbyist license

[Carl Friedberg]

At this very moment, all 3 of my VMS servers are unreachable,
but normally they are accessible.

I have two (pretty ancient) AlphaServer 800's, single 500mhz
processor, 2 Gb memory, running recent VMS with hobbyist
licenses. I also have an Itanium RX2600 dual-core box
running OpenVMS 8.4 (similar to the one Craig uses, I suspect).

All of these are available to perl developers. Send me an e-mail
and I will set up an account for you.

Please be aware that the backups are a bit cranky and the
internet connection is a slow T1.

Carl Friedberg
www.comets.com
carl.friedb...@comets.com
http://about.me/carl.friedberg

From: Craig A. Berry [mailto:craigbe...@mac.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 12:12 PM
To: Nicholas Clark
Cc: vmsperl@perl.org
Subject: Re: HP hobbyist license

On May 15, 2012, at 07:24 AM, Nicholas Clark  wrote:
I would find it really useful to have ssh access to a VMS system for testing
perl.

Thanks for making the effort.


It's unclear to me whether what I'm doing would be hobbyist, given that I'm
being paid.

It's a good question but I don't know the answer offhand.


But, I can't find the terms of the Hobbyist License *anywhere*.
Does anyone have or can point me to a copy that I can read?

One path would be to sign up for your own licenses at:



and specifically ask them in the box on the form that says, "In what ways do 
you use your OpenVMS hobbyist license?" whether what you're doing is allowed.

I believe you can still get an account on an HP server for purposes of open 
source porting.  See



In that case HP would be the license holder.  Also, it might be something 
slightly less ancient than the old alpha the deathrow folks have.  George Greer 
started down this path to set up a smoker and got tangled up at how different 
it is from anything he's used to, but he did get as far as a relatively clean 
build of 5.14.1.

Re: HP hobbyist license

[Craig A. Berry]

On May 15, 2012, at 07:24 AM, Nicholas Clark  wrote:I would find it really useful to have ssh access to a VMS system for testing perl.  Thanks for making the effort.It's unclear to me whether what I'm doing would be hobbyist, given that I'm being paid.  It's a good question but I don't know the answer offhand. But, I can't find the terms of the Hobbyist License *anywhere*. Does anyone have or can point me to a copy that I can read? One path would be to sign up for your own licenses at:and specifically ask them in the box on the form that says, "In what ways do you use your OpenVMS hobbyist license?" whether what you're doing is allowed.I believe you can still get an account on an HP server for purposes of open source porting.  SeeIn that case HP would be the license holder.  Also, it might be something slightly less ancient than the old alpha the deathrow folks have.  George Greer started down this path to set up a smoker and got tangled up at how different it is from anything he's used to, but he did get as far as a relatively clean build of 5.14.1.

HP hobbyist license

[Nicholas Clark]

I would find it really useful to have ssh access to a VMS system for testing
perl. Specifically, I'm keen to be able to be able to test tweaks the build
system on all of *nix, VMS and Windows so that I don't break anything.
*nix isn't a problem as I have access to pretty much everything interesting
(except Solaris on Sparc, and arguably Tru64, but they generally don't
cause build problems). Win32 is already covered by smoke-me smokers.
This leaves VMS.

It seems that one can get free ssh accounts on for VMS on the Deathrow
cluster - see http://gein.vistech.net/

However, they state that one can only use it to do things acceptable under
the Hobbyist License, because that's the terms of their licence from DEC,
er Compaq, er HP to run VMS.

It's unclear to me whether what I'm doing would be hobbyist, given that I'm
being paid. This distinction *is* relevant, because I know that being paid
disqualifies one from getting free licences to use Intel's icc, even when
one is being paid to work on Open Source. So I'd like to check.

But, I can't find the terms of the Hobbyist License *anywhere*.
Does anyone have or can point me to a copy that I can read?

Nicholas Clark