[Info-vax] OT: Elephants Can't Dance

[Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply]

In article
<537a1e69-d6a0-421e-830a-e846fe40f033 at j38g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
sapienzaf <sapienza at noesys.com> writes: 

> Here's my point about Oracle buying OpenVMS being a bad thing.
> 
> In HP we have a known problem of not marketing the product, yet still
> providing support and at least some identifiable continued development
> efforts.  In Oracle we see the same thing with respect to RDB.
> 
> So, what would be the gain if Oracle were to take OpenVMS?  Couldn't
> we expect them to just treat it the same as RDB, and as HP before
> them?
> 
> I also don't think Oracle needs or wants to be an operating system
> company.  They seem to be quite comfortable with a multi-platform
> database and associated applications.

I agree with all of your points.  However, Oracle, or at least the folks 
responsible for Rdb, have a huge respect for and knowledge of VMS.  
While the same might be true at HP with respect to the VMS engineers, 
these folks at HP are a very small cog in a very large machine whereas 
my guess is that the Rdb team within Oracle is relatively larger than 
the VMS team within HP.  I also guess that the fraction of profit Rdb 
provides to Oracle is larger than the fraction of profit VMS provides to 
HP.

Both are only guesses.  It would be interesting to have some more 
concrete information.