My hot take of the day: Windows 10 version 2004 is a better VMS than OpenVMS. The earlier versions were pretty good too, but since OpenVMS isn’t actually open-source (and HPE killed the hobbyist program where you could get free user licenses), I feel no special loyalty to it.

I have two decent Alpha workstations that I’m thinking about selling on eBay because I can’t justify powering them on and using the electricity to run them. I also have a spare VAXstation and a very nice VAXstation that I’m going to hold onto because I love the VAX architecture.

I also intend to run NetBSD on the VAXen. I tried putting the final version of VAX/VMS on the newer one, but the SCSI disk driver was using some obsolete SCSI commands that the SCSI-to-SATA adapter I was using to connect a SATA SSD didn’t like. NetBSD/vax has no such troubles.

The original Windows NT derives much more inspiration from the VMS of its architect’s previous company than it did from UNIX, but over time, both of them had to make accommodations to it. OpenVMS accumulated a truly enormous collection of POSIX compatibility flags and switches.

Anyway, if you want to play with something VMS-like, and not spend any money, you can get preconfigured 90-day trial VMs of Windows 10 Enterprise to mess around with, and the licenses for home use are obviously much less than whatever a commercial OpenVMS license must cost today.

I have a follow-up to this thread. Some good news for #OpenVMS hobbyists: @VMSSoftware (VSI) has acquired all the rights to OpenVMS from @HPE and will be running their own version of the OpenVMS Hobbyist program to replace HPE’s before they shut it down. http://vmssoftware.com/about/news/ 

I just got an email about this from Hunter Goatley of Process Software, long-time OpenVMS enthusiast and developer. So now I feel a little bit better about myself for buying all of that Alpha and VAX and Itanium hardware 10 to 20 years ago.