[Info-vax] OT: IBM Offering $9-10 Per Share for Sun

[JF Mezei]

Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> I can not see why the VMS engineers would do that.

Because they love their work ?

Why did some engineers design the DS10L out of a midnight hack ? Once it
was done, Compaq liked it and sold tousands of them in high profile uses
(genome project).

Also, consider the highly theoretical/speculative scenario when VMS
engineers learned that VMS was to be canned with IA64 and that the date
was coming soon. Consider that high end folks at HP were heard saying a
VMS port to 8086 was not possible or too expensive (excuse).

It would have been to the VMS engineer's own interests to do a proof of
concept leading to hard numbers on how big a porting effort it would be
which would have allowed VMS management to counter the false excuses
produced by those within HP not wanting VMS to thrive.


> It will do whatever senior management decide it will.

Correct. But because VMS is not a strategic product for HP, it is to the
VMS group's best self interest to try to change HP's senior managements'
minds. Not an easy job, and no garantee of success. But NOT trying
garantees that HP will let VMS wither away.

An announcement that a midnight hack resulted in a succesful boot of VMS
and a "directory" command on an 8086 server might have generated so much
good will from customers and positive feedback that HP might have had to
change its mind about letting VMS go away.

Re: they have done its twice before:

Correct. But this time around, all of the work to structure the code to
support multiple platforms on a common code base, AND they already have
the EFI interface done. So a port to 8086 would be different and more
"routine" than previous ones.