OpenVMS Hobbyist License

[Doug Phillips]

Ian, your last post in that thread says:

>the licensing web site is in the process of being updated.

but nothing has changed; the Software Licensing link is still not repaired, and I see nothing new on any of the licensing pages that I can find.

FYI, the link on the OpenVMS page points to:

http://licensing.hp.com/swl/view.slm?page=index

And the links in the SPD's point to:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/software/info/terms/swl_sld.html

Maybe this information will help whoever has been working on the update for the past three months.

[Ian Miller.]

OpenVMS licence info on

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/ovmslicensing/openvms_licensing_information.html

and I will ask about updates

[Doug Phillips]

>>Solution brief

>>
Documents maintained by the HP Legal team should be consulted if greater detail is required.

o End User License Agreement (EULA)
o Customer Agreement Master (CAM)
<<

I guess we should drop in on the HP Legal team, then.

>>
The following is a summary of terms contained in the EULA. The EULA is included with the software and is available from your HP sales representative. Please refer to the EULA for the full terms.
<<

I wonder why HP's competitors feel comfortable posting their complete EULA & CAM's on line, but HP doesn't?

>>
The software warranty period is 90 days for HP Branded software. This is a warranty that the physical media will be free from defects and viruses. There is no warranty that the software will be error-free.
<<

So, we promise that the DVD/CD will be readable and it won't have a virus, but the software might not work because we screwed something up; that's too bad, thanks for the money. Give us more money and maybe we'll fix our mistakes.

Wow, I wish I could do business like HP. Unfortunately, if I screw something I feel obligated to make it right. The customer paid me for something that works the way I said it would and that's what they should get. I guess I should have gone for my MBA so I wouldn't have those crazy moral values.

[John Gillings]

Doug,

>The customer paid me for something that
>works the way I said it would and that's
>what they should get. I guess I should have
>gone for my MBA so I wouldn't have those
>crazy moral values.

Agreed! In my experience, the quality of service and dedication to product is inversely proportional to the size of the organisation. it's not just HP. Example - I'm currently dealing with Netgear about a fairly expensive product which doesn't work the way they promised (it's a media player which is very picky about what it will play).

Netgear's attitude is pretty much "yes it's a bug but tough luck - we're not going to fix the firmware, but we think the NEXT model might do what you want, go buy that when we release it". On the other hand, a very small organisation who make "VideoReDo" are bending over backwards to try and make their product generate files which get around the Netgear bugs - unfortunately we don't have enough cooperation from Netgear to work out what to "fix".

Unfortunately the big organisations can get away with this dismissive attitude towards customers, and the people "at the coal face" don't take on ownership and pride in their products.

Indeed, with HP, they've even got customers like me doing their job for them, answering questions in forums like this and performing field testing of their products. Example - I found several clear bugs in T4, formally submitted a detailed diagnosis, with corrected code, but they couldn't be bothered to copy and paste it into the next released version! The bugs are still there.

Oh well :-(

[Ph Vouters]

To backup John Gillings' point of view, this is the fact I now document software bugs on my http://vouters.dyndns.org/tima/ public Web site. The bugs I now document tending to become product features, this is the very reason why I do document them.

I do prefer dealing with Opensource code, first, but not always, because the Opensource world is fairly much more positively responsive than profit making organizations, next because me having access to the source code, I can always make corrections.

For John Gillings and his regrettable purchase of a Netgear product, may I suggest him the reading of http://vouters.dyndns.org/ and its paragraph beginning with the words "Being trapped once"

Philippe

[Willem Grooters]

Larry,

Since you have your licenses, you'll be member of an HP user group. With that, there will be an HP representative. Contact him to get details on how to obtain patches. I've learned (not tried) that if you pass him your system serial number ($ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT F$GETSYI ("SERIAL_NUMBER"), IIRC) you may get access to the patches.