> The decision is understandable. There is no new Alpha or Itanium hardware and never will be. VSI is a business, and not a big one; it needs to make money. While it was maintaining v8, it continued offering hobbyist licenses for it, but now, if OpenVMS has a future, it's v9
I can understand dropping Alpha, but VSI is supporting 8.X on newer Itanium chips until at least 2028 for commercial customers. How hard is it to renew hobbyist licenses?
If you have legacy Itanium/Alpha/VAX hardware in your closet, you will no longer be able to use the hobby license to be legal, new licenses will be limited to the x86-64 version running in a ESXi VM valid for only 1 year at a time.