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Sigh... I was in passionate relationship with VMS from 1980 to 1994. The end of era...[^] 
/ravi
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I feel your pain, Ravi. My experience with VAX/VMS ended before yours in 1989, but I still remember the amazing feeling of consistency about things, and how Everything Just Worked.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I first did serious programming on a PDP-10 and felt the same way about it.
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My first programming experiences were on PDP-11s.
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Are you an Ada programmer too?
~d~
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No, but the husband of a friend of mine worked on the VAX ADA compiler at DEC.
/ravi
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~d~
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Noooo! At least I just updated mine last week.
Huh. I guess it pays to read the e-mail that contained my licenses:
"
The HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses we are issuing in 2020 will be the last set.
Subsequently, HPE will not issue new HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses.
Users who wish to avail of HPE OpenVMS long term licenses are encouraged to purchase permanent licenses at standard prices.
"
Yeah, no, I'm not buying it.
They've announced the end of the Hobbyist Program before.
I don't think it really costs them anything to provide Hobbyist licenses.
modified 8-Apr-20 17:25pm.
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Slight wind of hope in the article:
Quote: VSI is considering one option to continue hobbyist-class licenses.
TTFN - Kent
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: I don't think it really costs them anything to provide Hobbyist licenses.
... whereas killing it will cost them a lot of happy and loyal customers.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I think they feel they need to protect themselves against anyone who would try to use a Hobbyist License to run a business or otherwise make money.
Which is part of why they have to be renewed yearly.
Were I ever contracted to use one of mine to write an OpenVMS program for money, that might violate my agreement.
I'm not exactly holding my breath awaiting a million-dollar gig.
My systems spend most of their time powered off. About the only time I power them up is when I need to apply the new licenses. 
Once in a while I power one up to try out a bit of C code to check compatibility with other compilers.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: I think they feel they need to protect themselves against anyone who would try to use a Hobbyist License to run a business or otherwise make money.
Which is part of why they have to be renewed yearly.
Were I ever contracted to use one of mine to write an OpenVMS program for money, that might violate my agreement.
I'm not exactly holding my breath awaiting a million-dollar gig.
Quite. And is anyone, anywhere, actually buying new VMS licences? Surely not, except very rarely where porting existing code to Linux is just too expensive.
Who gets the money for existing VMS support contracts? Does HPE provide the support or does VSI get it?
It reminds me of the situation with Xinuos OpenServer 5 and 6 and UnixWare 7: Surely no one is buying new licences for these. The only income source for Xinuos on these must be support of existing contracts. (Is anyone buying OpenServer 10, for that matter?).
If support of existing contracts is in fact the primary income source, one wonders why they don't open source it (this comment applies to both OpenVMS and OpenServer/UnixWare).
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Install VMS v4.7 (or was it 4.5?) - that predates licenses so you can run it for free. Or just turn back the clock so it never reaches the expiration date.
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jsc42 wrote: turn back the clock so it never reaches the expiration date
Well, actually... the internal battery of my MicroVAX 3100 is dead, so it always starts up as some date in the past anyway.
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Sniff!
I was the Manufacturing Engineer for the VAX 8600 (Venus) release. (The announcement was on Halloween  )
Previously, I also was responsible for approving diagnostics for the VAX 11/750 BSDE release.
Those were the days.
Best OS ever.
But I never wave bye bye
modified 12-Apr-20 17:17pm.
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bVagadishnu wrote: Best OS ever.
For its time.
One of my fellow students came to work with Univac EXEC-8 (later renamed to OS-1100 for legal reasons) in the early 1980s - an OS developed in the 1970s for running huge batch jobs on mainframes filling large halls. He fell completely in love with how these mastadonts could really efficiently handle enormous jobs, and how you could, based on the Job Control Language information, tune the system to make optimum use of tape units, disk units, memory and CPU, based on the specified job requirements, to ensure that all resources were utilized optimally. --- For interactive jobs, OS-1100 failed miserably. (Details upon request...)
OS-1100 was not the best OS for the 1980s (or later). VMS was much closer, for the 1980. We tried it in the mid 1990s, on an Alpha CPU that was to serve 30 X.11 student terminals. It failed miserably. Whether it was the fault of Alpha or of VMS is not that essential. The system as a whole flopped.
Linux tried to be the best desktop for its time during the 1990s. It failed. It tried during the 200x. It failed. It tried during 201x. It failed.
The OS that is the best for its time is that satisfying the needs the best. Not the academic needs. Not the need of the nerds. The needs of the users. The user group has changed a lot from the 1980s until today. The reason why VMS is no longer The Best OS Ever is essentially that VMS users of the 1980s are not the users of today. The reason why Linux has never been The Bes OS Ever for desktop users is essentially that Linux users are not desktop users.
Noone really cares about nostalgia. It isn't what is used to be!
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For most people, 'The best OS ever' is the one that they first had an extensive experience of. Every subsequent OS is difference and hence not as good because it doesn't do things the same way as you were used to on your first OS.
For me, the first OS that I was seriously involved with was George 3. I came across VMS (on VAX 11/750s and VAX 11/780s) in the early '80s and can see why many consider it to be the best OS ever - it was straight forward, self consistent, expandable but it didn't do things the same way as George 3 (e.g. VMS had a max of 8 parameters on a command but any number of switches, whereas G3 had a max of 24 some of which could be non-positional effectively switches; VMS commands could be abbreviated to minimum uniqueness whereas G3 commands had fixed 2 char abbreviations); neither are 'bad' or 'good', just different from each other and personal bias was always to the first one you used. [In the mid 80s I added being an MVS/XA / MVS/ESA sys prog whilst still assisting as a G3 sys prog and DEC (VMS / RSX / RT11) sys prog.]
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You pull down its genes.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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I have a small déjà vue
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Cp-Coder wrote: Don't worry. They say that size is not important.
Who are they? I have never been told that 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Quote: Who are they?
No no no! I am not falling into that trap! 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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I've a good mind to report you for plagiarising Matthew Dennis.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Don't bother. This one's just a clone of the other.
Software Zen: delete this;
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