On 3/27/24 04:44, David Goodwin wrote:

> And for that matter, what exactly is the purpose of the Ambassador
> program? Why should I want to "bring value to VMS Software" when VMS
> software has no interest in bringing value to the community? It sounds
> an awful lot like an unpaid job to me, especially with the requirement
> to participate in meetings and "report on your work in the ecosystem".

What ecosystem? A newsgroup? A few barely-maintained websites? The VSI
forums, where Mister Moderator clomps in at the slightest hint that
people may not be devoting their free time Generating Commerical Value
for VSI?

Ooooh, I'm cross. Vexxed, even.

--
motk

On 3/27/24 06:01, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> no change in number of newcomers needing a lot of handhelding with basics

Handholding newbies is the price you pay for outreach. You solve that
with decent documentation, real examples, and so on. It's a good problem
to have!

When all your remaining problems are things like "I can't get my ancient
code I refuse to bring up from K&R to compile, bah" then you have an
actual problem, and that's been ignored for years.

--
motk

On 27/3/24 10:01, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>
> On 3/26/24 5:39 PM, Jim Duff wrote:
>> On 27/3/24 01:26, Chris Townley wrote:
>>> Just received 2 mails from VSI
>>>
>>> End of Alpha and I64 community licenses
>>>
>>> Looks like a more restricted X86 - WE can download a pre-built and
>>> licensed VMDK with a few LP, including compilers
>>>
>>> Or there is an Ambassador program
>>>
>>> Not sure what to think yet...
>>>
>>
>> *I'm* certainly confused.  The email says "Your current license is
>> valid through August 22, 2024"
>
> Which e-mail would that be?  The announcement about discontinuing Alpha
> and Integrity community licenses doesn't appear to have anything like
> that statement. It did say the existing licenses would be renewed one
> more time "in August" -- presumably August 2024.

I have to assume that when I get a personal email entitled "Updates to
your Community License" that references "Your current license", it's
referring to the only Community License I currently have, the one for
x86_64.

>
> , however
>>
>> https://sp.vmssoftware.com/#/packages/676
>>
>> says "x86 community licenses good through April 1, 2024", agreeing
>> with what licence list says.  That's five days away for those of us on
>> this side of the dateline.
>
> So far the x86 license seems to go mostly by field test practices and
> they have a PAK on the portal.  I've been assuming that would change
> sometime soon to how community has been working, but with the plug being
> pulled on that, it's an open question how and when there will be another
> PAK for OpenVMS x86. We've been told that at some point there will be
> this vmdk thing, but whether that's effective *now* with no other
> options, or whether there will be one more PAK on the portal, or what,
> is not something I've seen mentioned.
>

Hence my pointing out the (implied) gap between 01-Apr and
22-Aug for x86.

>>   I'm trying to avoid making April Fool's references.
>
> Go ahead and send around an announcement that your patch syndication
> service is back online :-).  While we're lamenting things that were good
> while they lasted :-(.
>
>

Here we are nearly 14 years after I was forced to kill the patch
syndication feeds, and I don't know how many years after the Sydney CSC
stopped providing the patch list, and there is *still* no way to
automatically retrieve a list of patches for your version of VMS.

--
eight-cubed.com

Hello All , Following on after Arne's response (that I agree with in
essesence) , Tho a note from in the application struck my interest ...

vvvvvvvvv
"Please note that it is not currently possible to get a community license for
Alpha or Integrity. If you are an OpenVMS Ambassador, you are welcome to apply
here."
The key work is 'currently' , this leads one to beleive that there may
(Or should one say Will) Be a Continuing Community license program in the future
? Let us hope at least a little bit .

twyl , JimL
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| James W. Laferriere | System Techniques | Give me VMS |
| Network & System Engineer | 3237 Holden Road | Give me Linux |
| jiml@system-techniques.com | Fairbanks, AK. 99709 | only on AXP |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

On 26/03/2024 21:10, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 3/26/2024 4:48 PM, Chris Townley wrote:
>
>> I might try to bring back to life my old firms development Vax and
>> Alpha. Some
>> perpetual licenses there, albeit slow.
>>
>
> I have to ask, slow for what?  I assume you're not doing commercial
> work.  Yeah, not the latest stuff, but, plenty for hobbyist stuff.
>
I have enjoyed VMS X86 - I spent £650+ on hardware to run it, and apart
from certain missing elements it has been fun - I was looking forward to
getting Basic (and LSE) and hopefully providing good/positive feedback

To go back to a VAX, or even the alpha with only a few compiler licenses
on hardware that is very old and slow, Not even sure if I will be bothered

--
Chris

On 3/26/2024 2:43 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:

> One further thought: I wonder what this means for systems like Eisner,
> which are running on VSI time-limited licences ?

As long as I'm at VSI (and I don't plan on leaving any time soon), I'll make
sure that EISNER is taken care of.

--

--- Rob

On 27/03/2024 00:06, Robert A. Brooks wrote:
> On 3/26/2024 2:43 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>
>> One further thought: I wonder what this means for systems like Eisner,
>> which are running on VSI time-limited licences ?
>
> As long as I'm at VSI (and I don't plan on leaving any time soon), I'll
> make sure that EISNER is taken care of.
>

Not that I have used it for years, but many thanks!

--
Chris

On Wed, 2024-03-27 at 07:12 +1300, David Goodwin wrote:
> > Losing the Alpha option is my real pain point.  Both my hobbyist
> > systems
> > are Alphas (DS10 and PWS-600au).
> >
> > The fact that they are summarily rejecting already submitted (but
> > not
> > yet approved) requests quite frankly hurts.
>
> I could perhaps handle loosing Alpha if we weren't also loosing x86.
>
> A fresh vmdk once a year is not an acceptable solution. I'm not
> setting up a fresh VM every year, its not worth the effort.

THey didn't say anything about closing the VSI service panel?
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On Wed, 2024-03-27 at 08:22 +1300, David Goodwin wrote:
> > They said they would be issuing final licences in 2025. But they
> > don't mention if they are open ended or not. They need to confirm
> > that.
>
> I think it is very very safe to assume they are not open-ended.
> They're giving Alpha and Itanium hobbyists a year to move off of
> OpenVMS.

I think some people would want to hang onto their VAX/Alpha
installations. Don't really care about TItanic though.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On Tue, 2024-03-26 at 20:06 -0400, Robert A. Brooks wrote:
> On 3/26/2024 2:43 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>
> > One further thought: I wonder what this means for systems like
> > Eisner, which are running on VSI time-limited licences ?
>
> As long as I'm at VSI (and I don't plan on leaving any time soon),
> I'll make sure that EISNER is taken care of.

I appreciate that, thanks.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

In article <e4b10507871cedc5824fe92241596d46edc4f89d.camel@munted.eu>,
alex.buell@munted.eu says...
>
> On Wed, 2024-03-27 at 07:12 +1300, David Goodwin wrote:
> > > Losing the Alpha option is my real pain point.  Both my hobbyist
> > > systems
> > > are Alphas (DS10 and PWS-600au).
> > >
> > > The fact that they are summarily rejecting already submitted (but
> > > not
> > > yet approved) requests quite frankly hurts.
> >
> > I could perhaps handle loosing Alpha if we weren't also loosing x86.
> >
> > A fresh vmdk once a year is not an acceptable solution. I'm not
> > setting up a fresh VM every year, its not worth the effort.
>
> THey didn't say anything about closing the VSI service panel?

The email I got says:
"How This Affects You

Your current license is valid through August 22, 2024. In the next
several days, we will send you your credentials for accessing our
Service Portal where you will get your replacement license (in August)
and software. On the day when your license expires, your access to the
Service Portal will be revoked."

So yeah, loosing access to the VSI service portal and as far as I can
see they will not be issuing standalone licenses - just refreshing the
VM once a year. Basically that student kit they had before, but now on
x86.

In article <bc05184eff3c8837b48cb6895d7018c256f7694f.camel@munted.eu>,
alex.buell@munted.eu says...
>
> On Wed, 2024-03-27 at 08:22 +1300, David Goodwin wrote:
> > > They said they would be issuing final licences in 2025. But they
> > > don't mention if they are open ended or not. They need to confirm
> > > that.
> >
> > I think it is very very safe to assume they are not open-ended.
> > They're giving Alpha and Itanium hobbyists a year to move off of
> > OpenVMS.
>
> I think some people would want to hang onto their VAX/Alpha
> installations. Don't really care about TItanic though.

I'm sure they would, but VAX hobbyists were not given this option and I
see no indication that Alpha will be any different. I guess hobbyists
who want to keep their Alpha installations running now have the same
options available to them as VAX hobbyists.

On 3/27/24 10:32, David Goodwin wrote:

> So yeah, loosing access to the VSI service portal and as far as I can
> see they will not be issuing standalone licenses - just refreshing the
> VM once a year. Basically that student kit they had before, but now on
> x86.

Yeah, it's dead Jim.

--
motk

I wonder if we will get a renewal of the X86 PAK, which expires on Monday

--
Chris

On Wed, 2024-03-27 at 13:32 +1300, David Goodwin wrote:
> > THey didn't say anything about closing the VSI service panel?
>
> The email I got says:
> "How This Affects You
>
> Your current license is valid through August 22, 2024. In the next
> several days, we will send you your credentials for accessing our
> Service Portal where you will get your replacement license (in
> August) and software. On the day when your license expires, your
> access to the Service Portal will be revoked."
>
> So yeah, loosing access to the VSI service portal and as far as I can
> see they will not be issuing standalone licenses - just refreshing
> the VM once a year. Basically that student kit they had before, but
> now on x86.

F**k. :-(
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 3/26/24 6:53 PM, Jim Duff wrote:
> On 27/3/24 10:01, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>>
>> On 3/26/24 5:39 PM, Jim Duff wrote:
>>>
>>> *I'm* certainly confused.  The email says "Your current license is
>>> valid through August 22, 2024"
>>
>> Which e-mail would that be?  The announcement about discontinuing Alpha
>> and Integrity community licenses doesn't appear to have anything like
>> that statement. It did say the existing licenses would be renewed one
>> more time "in August" -- presumably August 2024.
>
> I have to assume that when I get a personal email entitled "Updates to
> your Community License" that references "Your current license", it's
> referring to the only Community License I currently have, the one for
> x86_64.

Ah, ok. I just got a rather generic e-mail entitled "Updates to VSI
Community License Program," not the personal one you got. It occurs to
me I don't even have a current license since my applications in
September and October 2023 were never either accepted or rejected. For
OpenVMS x86 I've been using the registration loophole where a prior
account on the service portal provides the ability to download a PAK.
If that's over then I guess I'm done. I applied for this new vmdk thing
today and this time didn't even get an automated acknowledgement, so
it's looking like this one may be ignored like my previous two applications.

On 3/26/2024 9:00 PM, Chris Townley wrote:
> I wonder if we will get a renewal of the X86 PAK, which expires on Monday
>
I just noticed that a little earlier Myself on my lone X86 instance. If
it doesn't guess I'll just trash that VM and allocate the resources
elsewhere. Pity...

-Bill

Well well...

Took my first VMS/DCL introduction course some 30+ years ago.
Have been doing VMS work every single workday since then.
Up to 2000 as emploided and up to now running my own company.

My current/last assignment was cancelled by the customer on the
last on June 2023 (last summer). I'm now into retirement plans...

So what now? It is very mixed feelings. As much as I have loved
my VMS work over the years, it is an very "empty" feeling at the
moment. I have obviously put to much work and devotion in this
and it is today clear that I have been very close to loosing both
my wife and my familly over the years. That hurts *a lot* today.
The only positive part is that I have provided an economical
stability today for my wife and familly, but I have lost a lot
of my childrens grow-up time.

It is like all my efforts spent on work are just worthless today.
Now I'm 100% devoted to my wife who I try to make up for all the
lost time the last 40 years (incl my 10 PDP-11 years).

I will probably simply leave everything VMS related behind and
will not be either here on c.o.v or on the VSI forum.

I might get a call from my last customer to do some consulting
when they start up the project to move of the VMS platform into
something else. I can just as well milk some last money from them,
as long as it doesn't interfere with my devotion to my wife.

It has been some fun also, with VMS and c.o.v. Thanks all!

Jan-Erik Söderholm
Sweden.

In article <utvdak$2bpcm$1@dont-email.me>,
Dave Froble <davef@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."

>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.

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.

Personally, I think the way to address this would have been to
simply do away with PAKs and time-limited licenses entirely.

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?

- Dan C.

On 2024-03-26, motk <yep@yep.yep> wrote:
> On 3/27/24 04:44, David Goodwin wrote:
>
>> And for that matter, what exactly is the purpose of the Ambassador
>> program? Why should I want to "bring value to VMS Software" when VMS
>> software has no interest in bringing value to the community? It sounds
>> an awful lot like an unpaid job to me, especially with the requirement
>> to participate in meetings and "report on your work in the ecosystem".
>
> What ecosystem? A newsgroup? A few barely-maintained websites? The VSI
> forums, where Mister Moderator clomps in at the slightest hint that
> people may not be devoting their free time Generating Commerical Value
> for VSI?
>

VSI management are either out of touch with reality (which based on past
experience is always possible) and are overrating their own importance,
or this is VSI moving to a managed decline model (where they extract as
much money as they can from a captive audience) without outright saying so.

I wonder if this is something driven by Darya or if any part of this will
change when she takes over (because she might actually disagree with it).

> Ooooh, I'm cross. Vexxed, even.
>

You sound like that character from The Librarians. :-)

Simon.

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

On 2024-03-26, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>
> (warning: this is going to be a long rant)
>
> First announcement link:
> https://vmssoftware.com/about/news/2024-03-25-community-license-update/
>
> The changes seems to be:
> * student license program is dropped
> * community license program is changed
> - not available for Alpha and Itanium, only available for x86-64
> - not available as license+kit, only available as preinstalled disk image
> * new VMS ambassador license
> - with obligations to contribute
> - license for all 3 platforms

What is the point of supplying a licence for all 3 platforms, if most of
the hobbyist users will not be able to run the ambassador's software on
2 of those 3 platforms ? Is the ambassador simply doing unpaid work for
VSI's commercial customers _only_ ?

> - license+kit model
>
> Reasons given are to solve problems:
> * too much work managing licenses
> * too little contribution back
>
> I don't think the changes will solve the problems.
>
> It is obvious that VSI has been struggling with the community licenses,
> but VSI will still have to do commercial licenses, ISV licenses and
> the new VMS ambassador licenses. If that process is not automated, then
> it will stille be hassle.
>

I think HPE (including HPE India!) did a far better job of this than VSI
are doing.

I don't know how many hobbyist licences HPE had to manage, but I would be
surprised if it was much less than the number VSI have to manage.

Even though HPE only had one person doing this, including after the move
to India occurred, the process always seemed to "flow" much smoothly than
it has done with VSI.

I knew I would find something nice to say about HPE India one day. :-)

Simon.

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

On 2024-03-26, David Goodwin <david+usenet@zx.net.nz> wrote:
>
> I wonder why community licenses were never automated. Why was there ever
> a queue? Why did it need someone to do things to process it?
>
> Surely they could have just had a form that added a row to a database
> and then sent an email. Would have been a lot easier than all of this.

They probably should have tied it to the DECUS membership number, just
like HPE did. You could get a free membership number from Eisner as well.

Simon.

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

On 2024-03-26, Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
> No longer doing software work ...
>

In a way you are - you are still doing the maths/algorithms/procedures
involved in building your aircraft... :-)

Simon.

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

On 3/26/2024 2:44 PM, David Goodwin wrote:
> In article <utulvc$1pmvc$1@dont-email.me>, news@cct-net.co.uk says...
>> Just received 2 mails from VSI
>>
>> End of Alpha and I64 community licenses
>>
>> Looks like a more restricted X86 - WE can download a pre-built and
>> licensed VMDK with a few LP, including compilers
>>
>> Or there is an Ambassador program
>>
>> Not sure what to think yet...
>
> I think the community license/hobbyist program has officially ended -
> the x86 vmdks are something entirely different and a continuation of
> that student thing they were doing before.
>
> Going to be interesting to see what sort of damage this does to OpenVMS.
> I suspect their "community engagement" is going to pretty much disappear
> entirely as a result of this which may put the long-term future of
> OpenVMS at risk.
>
> Could do some significant damage to any open-source packages that aren't
> being directly maintained by VSI themselves too. And not just on Alpha
> and Itanium - I don't think I'd bother porting/maintaining stuff if its
> not going to be used outside of perhaps a few commercial users even if I
> could use the Ambassador program to do it at no cost.
>
> And for that matter, what exactly is the purpose of the Ambassador
> program? Why should I want to "bring value to VMS Software" when VMS
> software has no interest in bringing value to the community? It sounds
> an awful lot like an unpaid job to me, especially with the requirement
> to participate in meetings and "report on your work in the ecosystem".

I think that is the main point.

That some hobbyists are sorry that they can no longer run
VMS on their 25 year old Alpha's is not in itself a valid
business concern for VSI.

But I believe that VSI (and before them HPE and HP) has
had significant benefits from the CL program (previously
the hobbyist program).

A huge part of the open source available for VMS was not
created/ported by VSI/HPE/HP but by hobbyists.

The availability of open source is critical for VMS
future. To modernize the interface and integration for legacy
systems. And maybe some day to actually implement new systems.

It will be a lot more expensive for VSI to do all that
work themselves than administering an attractive CL program.

And I also believe that VSI has had huge benefits from the
CL community for the x86-64 port as "unpaid testers of
FT versions". I know that the CL community has found a
significant number of compiler bugs. And I assume that
VSI paying customers appreciate that they did not get to
find those bugs in their environment.

The VMS community is highly skewed:
* there is a very small group doing most of the contributions -
porting open source, testing FT releases, answering questions
from beginners etc.
* there is a small group of new people that want to
learn VMS
* there is a huge group that like to run VMS as a hobby, lurks
around in various forums but rarely contribute
* there is a mid size group of whiners that does not run VMS
at all but like to hear themself talk about what VSI should
do in 2024 or what DEC should have done in 1984 or whatever

The idea behind the changes seems to be that:
- the first group will join VMS ambassador program
- the second group will be OK with the new CL program
- the third group does not matter

But I don't think the first group will join VMS ambassador program.
Well - some will. But a lot will not. They don't like the name.
They don't like the commitment. They don't like what happened
to the third group.

Yesterday I guessed that half of the first group would join
VMS ambassador program, but based on feedback since then that guess
seems too high today.

The changes does not make business sense for VSI.

Arne

On 2024-03-26, Craig A. Berry <craigberry@nospam.mac.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/26/24 6:53 PM, Jim Duff wrote:
>> On 27/3/24 10:01, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>>>
>>> On 3/26/24 5:39 PM, Jim Duff wrote:
>>>>
>>>> *I'm* certainly confused.  The email says "Your current license is
>>>> valid through August 22, 2024"
>>>
>>> Which e-mail would that be?  The announcement about discontinuing Alpha
>>> and Integrity community licenses doesn't appear to have anything like
>>> that statement. It did say the existing licenses would be renewed one
>>> more time "in August" -- presumably August 2024.
>>
>> I have to assume that when I get a personal email entitled "Updates to
>> your Community License" that references "Your current license", it's
>> referring to the only Community License I currently have, the one for
>> x86_64.
>
> Ah, ok. I just got a rather generic e-mail entitled "Updates to VSI
> Community License Program," not the personal one you got. It occurs to
> me I don't even have a current license since my applications in
> September and October 2023 were never either accepted or rejected. For
> OpenVMS x86 I've been using the registration loophole where a prior
> account on the service portal provides the ability to download a PAK.
> If that's over then I guess I'm done. I applied for this new vmdk thing
> today and this time didn't even get an automated acknowledgement, so
> it's looking like this one may be ignored like my previous two applications.

I wonder what happens to Perl on VMS in that case ?

Are VSI packaging your Perl version in x86-64 VMS or are they maintaining
their own Perl port ?

Simon.

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