OpenVMS Hobbyist License Question

Jerome Fine replies: If you think that is bad, try the full distribution of V5.07 of RT-11 which Mentec and Compaq/DEC still sell at $ US 1600.00 with the Qbus license on top of that for about $ US 900 and again that is just the operating system. Part of the answer might be that the DOCs are still all in paper. Also, I suspect that DEC still has the copyright on the V5.06 DOC set which could account for the most significant portion of the $ US 1600.00, but those DOCs are mostly over 10 years old with the 1992 V5.06 being mostly a new combination of the material into more and smaller manuals. Of course, FORTRAN and C are extra. There is no dBase - use RDB! No decent word processor, etc. Not even a decent editor like EVE/TPU on VMS although probably KED has a few things. So save your pennies. Incidentally, I am finally looking seriously at Y2K patches for the hobby V5.03 of RT-11, but if possible I would like to go much further - up to Y10K if possible. I have not yet determined if it is even technically feasible to predict when the Gregorian Modification (only century years divisible by 400 are leap years) will not only break down, but do so in a manner which is not predictable. Now this will not happen until after year 4000 C.E. (Gregorian), so I would appreciate some feedback, not only from RT-11 hobby users, but also from the general list! Does anyone feels that if Y2K patches are being done for an operating system and the code can be extended up to the year 9999 C.E., should I just ignore the problems associated with too many leap years being present. Note that this affects just two areas. The rollover of a day from February 28th to the next day when the year is a century year divisible by 400. Also, if the banner in MACRO is displaying the date and time, the day of the week is also displayed, as is the day of the week displayed in LINK and LIBR. One solution is to just ignore the problem. It is also possible to make a reasonable attempt which can probably be done up to at least 6000 C.E. Most likely, just omit the leap years at 4000 C.E. and 6000 C.E., but it might be necessary to omit additional leap years between 4000 C.E. and 6000 C.E. The final possibility is to allow the user to have a table to schedule the omitted leap years. Is anyone familiar with leap seconds in VMS at the end of June and December? A current best estimate table could be set up and the user could modify it when corrections are available sometime in the next 2000 years. I realize that this latter part is quite off-topic on a relative basis and I apologize, but V5.03 is from 1985 and needs at least the Y2K patches for hobby users now. I can't see a better time to extend the Y2K code all the way to Y10K if any extension beyond 2099 C.E. is being considered. The extra effort to do the work is probably much less than the effort to solve the associated technical problems and even both should no more than double the total work of just the Y2K patches by themselves if it is all being done at the same time. It would really be appreciated if anyone who is reading this would at least take a minimum couple of minutes to express their opinion on the issue. Thanks in advance if you do!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At least this OFF TOPIC is actually very serious, at least it is to many of us even though we will not be around to check on the results. But, is not one of the primary goals of preservation to save both hardware and software to be around to be used in the future. What better method can be found than to ensure that when the current Y2K patches, put out for only commercial users of V5.07 of RT-11, expire AND few, if any experts are still around to make additional bug fixes, RT-11 will be all ready to continue far into the future without any changes. I agree that there probably will not be any hardware to run PDP-11 software, but perhaps. After all, they are still looking at and attempting to understand languages that are 3000 years old, why not RT-11, especially if someone took the trouble to allow the then current year to be entered - or at least the equivalent date on the assumption the calendar will probably not last that long in any case. Besides, it really would be a lot of fun. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine