[Info-vax] Should Oracle buy OpenVMS?

[JF Mezei]

Michael Kraemer wrote:

> which probably was HP's plan anyway.
> They bought Compaq only three months after
> alpha's EOL annoucement, so this was
> probably part of the deal.

Carly ad Curly were already cuddling away and salivating at the thought
of the HP Compaq wedding some time before June 25 2001. (carly said so
in some interview)

However, I think that Curly had already initiated the
process/negotiations to kill Alpha well before that.  You don't
negotiate such a deal with intel in a couple of weeks.

Curly had already tried to kill VMS the year before, but was convinced
by Marcello to not only suspend those plans (because Compaq desperatly
needed the revenus generated by VMS) but was also given a modest
marketing budget (which lead to the few months of "VMS renaissance" with
early 10% growth in sales. This ended in early 2001, followed by the
Alpha murder on June 25th.

One can also argue that Palmer had set in motion a roadmap to kill Alpha
when he signed that deal with Intel where in exchange for removing the
Hudson FAB burden from Digital, Intel would get the IP rights to Alpha,
and Digital would port Digital Unix to IA64. (Which shows that Palmer
didn't have long term plans for VMS).

My guess is that the Carly/Curly marriage forced Compaq to precipitate
the murder of Alpha. Compaq may have originally intended to do a slower
phase out and especially wait for IA64 to be ready for prime time. (you
basically slow down Alpha development to let IA64 catch up, at which
point, you can announce that Alpha no longer has an advantage).

It is fairly clear now that Curly was fairly quick to call the M&A
bankers once he was given the job of CEO. Remember that Compaq had
failed to find/attract a suitable CEO, so all Compaq could do is to find
a buyer ASAP before the incompetant temporary CEO caused too much damage
to the value of the company.

It is obvious that Carly, for whom image and hairstyle was very
important didn't want to be weigted down with the difficult job of
murdering Alpha. So she got Curly to do the dirty deed before the merger
was announced. She did kill Tru64 as well as MPE on Sept 7th when the
wedding was announced.

All Carly had to do with regards to Alpha & VMS is mention that HP would
continue "the plan of record" (which HP didn't uphold fully anyways).


One possibility, is that Intel had given Palmer an open invitation to
kill Alpha when the deal between the two was signed. Curly could have
used that already negotiated plan when he got on his knees to beg Carly
to buy Compaq.

Consider that Digital had negotiated $$$ from Intel to help port Digital
Unix to IA64. Now that HP was going to kill Dec Unix, perhaps those
funds were simply re-assigned to VMS to port it to IA64.