[mustntmumble]

I am going to attempt to transcribe what was said about the Hobbyist Programme:

The last thing that I wanted to touch on has to do with a new community licensing programme. I have been with VSI almost 3 years and everywhere I've had a chance to talk to people or go to events, I am always asked about Hobbyist Licenses. I'm pleased to let you know we are introducing a new community license programme which will begin in the fall of 2020. As many of you are aware, HPE allowed those on the HPE Hobbyist License programme to make one additional request or purchase of the HP version of OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses towards the end of last year and with that programme winding down, we have gone ahead and decided to proceed with a similar programme called the Community Licensing Programme. The content available will be basically for Integrity users and for Alpha users. There will not be anything for VAX users, no VAX licenses. There will be some requirements placed upon the user in terms of agreeing to our end user license agreement, our EULA, and also the stipulation that these are not to be used for commercial gain or for commercial use and there will also be some limitations in terms of what the users get but we believe it will be robust enough for you to do the things that you wish to do. So again, we're delighted to announce this programme and delighted to be working with you for all of these changes that are going on and we're excited. We appreciate you, we appreciate the business that we receive, and the good news is that we are continuing to grow. And also regarding the community license we do anticipate the same for x86. So with that I would like to now turn the time over to Mr. Clair Grant. ...

(sorry for any errors or omissions, please do not regard my poor attempt at transcription as being accurate, I urge you to listen to this section yourself, it starts at about 7 mins 50 seconds)

Personally I'm very sad that VAX licenses will not continue to be provided, as I love the VAX architecture, and have great nostalgic fondness for it.

[kragen]

Thank you! Verily, the VAX omission is grievous.

[vt240]

They just can't do it due to licensing, without releasing their own VAX build of OpenVMS. That's not going to happen for obviously reasons.

[skissane]

I wonder, if you get from VSI an Alpha or Itanium license file for OpenVMS, would OpenVMS for VAX accept the same license file?

People long ago cracked the license key generation for OpenVMS. (Plus, there are various leaked license files floating around, including non-expiring perpetual licenses.) The OpenVMS hobbyist community has always opposed doing that – there is no reason to do that when there is a legal method to run OpenVMS, and there was a concern it would damage relations with HPE thereby threatening the future of the hobbyist program. But, if there stops being any legal way to run OpenVMS on VAX, I wonder if the community attitude would change on that topic?

[vt240]

They wont because the PRODUCER value is wrong in the VSI licenses. But you are correct, that for most uses outside of commercial museum systems, its probably not much of an issue since there are license generators out there in the wild.

It is really unfortunate, that a community which has always been highly adverse to software piracy, would be forced into such a situation by HPE to maintain their hobby systems though. At this stage, VAX VMS being out of support for so many years, and having such little commercial value even under emulation, it just seems silly HPE does not issue a perpetual non-comerical license for VAX systems.