[Info-vax] Should Oracle buy OpenVMS?

[JF Mezei]

Neil Rieck wrote:

> If I believed this I wouldn't hang out in the newsgroup. Oracle has a
> product (RDB) which depends upon OpenVMS so they would probably be
> interested in buying it if the price was right. (now read my next
> comment)

Even if it were given to them for free, Oracle would have to build the
support teams, and build up VMS engineering to give it a big development
boost to bring it into the 21st century, port it to a modern platform
etc. Huge investment.

If Oracle lets HP downsize VMS out of existence, then Oracle can offer
sweet deals to RDB customers to migrate over to Oracle on Solaris. This
would likely be much cheaper and profitable for Oracle than to keep
developping VMS/RDB along with Oracle/Solaris.

Sun was quite smart to keep developping Solaris on 8086 because it was
great insurance against rumours of Sparc's demise. And from Oracle's
point of view, it gives them the option to continue Sparc or end Sparc
and focus on the 8086 at very little cost.