recent acquisitions for the House of VAX

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Sun Sep 9 01:17:05 2001

At 01:17 AM 9/9/01 -0400, you wrote:
> >No, I _know_ the Hobbyist program will go away.
>
>Some questions from me.
>The Hobbyist program is from Encompass, is that a wholly owned
> subsidiary of Compaq? I thought the Encompass thing meant it
> was already outsourced.

Encompass is a User's group that is funded by Compaq. The User's group (and
in particular the Dallas chapter) administers the program.

>When an Encompass liscence is called up are there any limits to it
> (Time, Features)? I already heard what was said about marginal
> compilers not being present, a checkmark for that one.

All Hobbyist VMS licenses are good for 1 year from the date they are
issued. They must then be renewed. All layered products (each with their
own license) are also 1 year licenses but my experience has been that they
are 1 yr from your last renewel. So if you request them with 1 month to go
on your DECUS^h^h^h^h^hEncompass membership they expire in one month.

>A word or two on what a PAK and a Condist are for the newbies
> would be nice. (I guess I thought a PAK was a liscence; so then
> are you saying liscences aren't lifetime?)

A ConDist is a "Consolidated Distribution" and it contains copies of all
the software that is current for a particular platform at a given instance
in time. If a new release of the OS has occurred since the last ConDist
issue (generally at least twice and perhaps 4 times per year) a copy of
that is included. Otherwise, it isn't. The CD version has anywhere from 8
to 15 CDs with packages each in their own directories on a particular CD
(the index tells you which one). You need a particular PAK (license) in
order to run the various utility. Not all layered products are licensed
through the hobbiest program, so there is more on the ConDist than you can
use.

Typically the licenses that DEC issued to its customers did _not_ expire
and were good on any release of VMS past the one they were issued for (so a
5.5 license would still work on a 6.0 or even 7.x release) however they
were limited to the "class" of computer they would license, so if it were
issued for a MicroVAX II and the customer upgraded to a MicroVAX III they
would have to buy more "units".

Generally you need a VAX-VMS and VMS-USER PAK to run the basic OS on a
single node. You need a CLUSTER license to cluster nodes and each node in
the cluster needs its own VMS PAK. Workstations (things with heads) need
different licenses than servers.

Typically someone who has licensed a machine can transfer the license to
you by filling out the license transfer paperwork and by you paying Compaq
$300 to process it.

--Chuck
Received on Sun Sep 09 2001 - 01:17:05 BST