Software licensing
Aug. 1st, 2010 05:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivo(No, not Microsoft.)
I run almost entirely on open source and freeware, aside from the library systems at work. Linux is my preferred OS on the PC, but I also use other hardware and emulations of yet more hardware.
IBM's MVS is the environment I first learned some 40 years ago, and that can now be run on the Hercules emulator, eliminating the need for millions of dollars worth of hardware. I do have it set up and take a poke at it occasionally. But that's all freeware, and even MVS is now open source in theory. They always distributed source code with the OS and MVS has been placed in the public domain partly due to court rulings years ago. The existing source code is not entirely perfect, apparently, but it is close enough that there are groups working on new versions.
After MVS I moved into the DEC world with VAX and PDP equipment. Both of those hardware environments can also be emulated well on a PC, and I have a VAX setup configured though I rarely use it. The reason for that is that I now own two smaller DEC Alpha systems (actual "iron") and have one set up at home and one at work. The Alpha runs several operating systems, including Linux, but I prefer the native OpenVMS. That's a direct descendant of the VAX operating system I used back in 1986. OpenVMS is not quite freeware and not quite open source, but the current copyright holder (Hewlett Packard) does make it freely available for non-commercial use. I use it on the SimH VAX emulation as well as on the real Alphas.
Unfortunately, OpenVMS requires annual licensing. You have to renew your license for each machine, and though there is no charge for that, it is a maze of twisty little passages, all different. Each component of the operating system and related tools and utilities has a separate license key, all associated with a specific expiration date. New license keys can be obtained via e-mail at any time just by filling out the appropriate forms over the web. This doesn't seem all that bad except for two things.
First off, in order to apply for licenses, you have to belong to an HP user group (years ago it would have been DECUS, the DEC user group, but of course that has been absorbed by Compaq and then in turn by HP.) Membership in the HP group is also free for hobbyists, but managing the paperless process is confusing. There are too many groups, and too many options, and I never feel sure that I've remembered the right choices when it comes time to renew. I don't need an invoice for $750 in "associate" membership fees, believe me. It doesn't help that HP keeps renaming and recombining these user groups at a mutation rate that seems to be about twice per year.
Second, there's the process of actually installing the license keys. In theory, they make it simple by e-mailing you a script that can just be run on your OpenVMS system. But that assumes that you receive the e-mail directly on the target system. With several machines, this is unlikely. Transferring the script through FTP usually does seem to work, though at least once I've had a problem with the end of line characters being improperly translated. Since there are more than a hundred license keys and each consists of a long string of encrypted gibberish, you really don't want to type them in by hand. Really.
So what happens if you don't renew? Well, your machine doesn't quit running. Not quite, anyway. It becomes a single user environment, though, and all network functions stop working. You can only log in from the console. So-called "layered" products, such as compilers and utilities, will not run on an expired license. In essence, you are left with just enough of the OS to let you put in the new license keys to get it running again. The problem with that? No network. So you don't want to let the license expire once you've got it running, or you'll be typing in those keys by hand. It takes about a dozen of them to get the network running again so you can transfer the rest in. Been there, done that. I'd rather not repeat.
The alternative is to get the keys into a laptop or a PC, hitch up a terminal emulator via a serial cable to act as the console, and pump the keys in that way. I've done it, but it's not much more fun than typing the keys in would be.
Oh, and VMS does not issue warnings in advance of expiration dates. It works up to midnight on the last day, and then stops.
At the moment, entirely by luck, my expiration dates are roughly coincident with my father's birthday which helps me to remember when I have to renew. I just did it this week for the workstation at home. I'll have to do it for the DS10 at work tomorrow, since the renewal requires that you submit the CPU serial number and I don't have that information here at home.
I find myself wondering what will happen when HP decides that OpenVMS is no longer supported. VAXen are still in use, but relatively few of them any more. No new ones have been built for years. The Alphas were dropped from production about three years ago, though HP continues to support them. That support is due to run out soon. OpenVMS itself is still used on the HP IA64 processor, so it will continue to live a while longer though I suspect the end of life for the IA64 is on the horizon.
Will this licensing requirement continue? Will we be setting the clocks back on our Alphas and VAXen to keep them running on expired licenses? (I bet that doesn't actually work.) Will HP agree to place the OS source in depository and allow its use in the future? Most other DEC operating systems are now freely distributable (not all, but most.) Though the Alpha has quickly fallen out of favor in the trendy US market, it is still widely used overseas. I find it hard to guess whether HP will let go of the red tape and allow us to keep the Alpha and OpenVMS alive. I can understand their desire to keep track of usage and installations, because it helps them to estimate the viability of the software as a commercial product and estimate whether it is worth continued support. Still, I hope that when the end of that commercial cycle is reached, and the end may be soon, we will not face a legal roadblock to our continued use of this high quality environment.
I run almost entirely on open source and freeware, aside from the library systems at work. Linux is my preferred OS on the PC, but I also use other hardware and emulations of yet more hardware.
IBM's MVS is the environment I first learned some 40 years ago, and that can now be run on the Hercules emulator, eliminating the need for millions of dollars worth of hardware. I do have it set up and take a poke at it occasionally. But that's all freeware, and even MVS is now open source in theory. They always distributed source code with the OS and MVS has been placed in the public domain partly due to court rulings years ago. The existing source code is not entirely perfect, apparently, but it is close enough that there are groups working on new versions.
After MVS I moved into the DEC world with VAX and PDP equipment. Both of those hardware environments can also be emulated well on a PC, and I have a VAX setup configured though I rarely use it. The reason for that is that I now own two smaller DEC Alpha systems (actual "iron") and have one set up at home and one at work. The Alpha runs several operating systems, including Linux, but I prefer the native OpenVMS. That's a direct descendant of the VAX operating system I used back in 1986. OpenVMS is not quite freeware and not quite open source, but the current copyright holder (Hewlett Packard) does make it freely available for non-commercial use. I use it on the SimH VAX emulation as well as on the real Alphas.
Unfortunately, OpenVMS requires annual licensing. You have to renew your license for each machine, and though there is no charge for that, it is a maze of twisty little passages, all different. Each component of the operating system and related tools and utilities has a separate license key, all associated with a specific expiration date. New license keys can be obtained via e-mail at any time just by filling out the appropriate forms over the web. This doesn't seem all that bad except for two things.
First off, in order to apply for licenses, you have to belong to an HP user group (years ago it would have been DECUS, the DEC user group, but of course that has been absorbed by Compaq and then in turn by HP.) Membership in the HP group is also free for hobbyists, but managing the paperless process is confusing. There are too many groups, and too many options, and I never feel sure that I've remembered the right choices when it comes time to renew. I don't need an invoice for $750 in "associate" membership fees, believe me. It doesn't help that HP keeps renaming and recombining these user groups at a mutation rate that seems to be about twice per year.
Second, there's the process of actually installing the license keys. In theory, they make it simple by e-mailing you a script that can just be run on your OpenVMS system. But that assumes that you receive the e-mail directly on the target system. With several machines, this is unlikely. Transferring the script through FTP usually does seem to work, though at least once I've had a problem with the end of line characters being improperly translated. Since there are more than a hundred license keys and each consists of a long string of encrypted gibberish, you really don't want to type them in by hand. Really.
So what happens if you don't renew? Well, your machine doesn't quit running. Not quite, anyway. It becomes a single user environment, though, and all network functions stop working. You can only log in from the console. So-called "layered" products, such as compilers and utilities, will not run on an expired license. In essence, you are left with just enough of the OS to let you put in the new license keys to get it running again. The problem with that? No network. So you don't want to let the license expire once you've got it running, or you'll be typing in those keys by hand. It takes about a dozen of them to get the network running again so you can transfer the rest in. Been there, done that. I'd rather not repeat.
The alternative is to get the keys into a laptop or a PC, hitch up a terminal emulator via a serial cable to act as the console, and pump the keys in that way. I've done it, but it's not much more fun than typing the keys in would be.
Oh, and VMS does not issue warnings in advance of expiration dates. It works up to midnight on the last day, and then stops.
At the moment, entirely by luck, my expiration dates are roughly coincident with my father's birthday which helps me to remember when I have to renew. I just did it this week for the workstation at home. I'll have to do it for the DS10 at work tomorrow, since the renewal requires that you submit the CPU serial number and I don't have that information here at home.
I find myself wondering what will happen when HP decides that OpenVMS is no longer supported. VAXen are still in use, but relatively few of them any more. No new ones have been built for years. The Alphas were dropped from production about three years ago, though HP continues to support them. That support is due to run out soon. OpenVMS itself is still used on the HP IA64 processor, so it will continue to live a while longer though I suspect the end of life for the IA64 is on the horizon.
Will this licensing requirement continue? Will we be setting the clocks back on our Alphas and VAXen to keep them running on expired licenses? (I bet that doesn't actually work.) Will HP agree to place the OS source in depository and allow its use in the future? Most other DEC operating systems are now freely distributable (not all, but most.) Though the Alpha has quickly fallen out of favor in the trendy US market, it is still widely used overseas. I find it hard to guess whether HP will let go of the red tape and allow us to keep the Alpha and OpenVMS alive. I can understand their desire to keep track of usage and installations, because it helps them to estimate the viability of the software as a commercial product and estimate whether it is worth continued support. Still, I hope that when the end of that commercial cycle is reached, and the end may be soon, we will not face a legal roadblock to our continued use of this high quality environment.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-01 02:34 pm (UTC)(Wikipedia informs me of why it's called "OpenVMS", but the reason seems unsatisfactory: there's no connection between POSIX/Unix-compatibility and "open" that I can see. They could've just as well called it "BrilliantBlueVMS" instead with the same reasoning.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-01 03:35 pm (UTC)It was really a big deal then, and they weren't stealing the word "open" from anyone else at the time. Standard VMS programs had to use VMS library calls. OpenVMS programs could use UNIX style library calls, with UNIX style names and even UNIX style file names.
VMS security has always been tighter than UNIX, so this made it possible to run UNIX applications such as SQL databases and network services on VMS, taking advantage of the "open" coding ability and at the same time, the "closed" security.
Twenty-five years have passed, and we have a different understanding of some of this now, but the name is perfectly valid in its context.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-01 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-01 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-01 04:28 pm (UTC)