[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[Neil Rieck]

On Mar 22, 8:40 pm, Arne Vajhøj <a... at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> Neil Rieck wrote:
> > Needless to say our databases are still based upon RMS but I'm sure
> > we'll get there some day. Oracle-RDB is the Cadillac solution. (if
> > OpenVMS is ever ported to x86-64 then I'm sure this technology
> > (OpenVMS-RDB) would attain critical mass)
>
> I doubt that.
>
> I don't think the price difference Itanium - x86-64 and uncertainty
> about Itanium are the only reasons holding back VMS.
>
> The market wants Linux.
>
> It may only be a Chevrolet, but ...
>
> Arne

The only people in "the market" are bean counters and the only reason
they want Linux is because it is free. These people make no distiction
between purchase price and total cost of ownership. If OpenVMS was
free (or near free) they would want it instead of Linux.

Twenty years ago, companies jockied for world domination by trying to
have the best OS. Today most people "on the street" only care about
getting to the internet and the OS has become almost as irrelavent as
the BIOS. IMHO smart companies will start giving away their OSs in
order to leverage hardware sales (but many will still make money
though software maintenance contacts). I'm not sure about other
companies but OSs licences have already started to drop at both IBM
and SUN, and this happened before IBM tried to by SUN.

With regards to Intel, the so called x86-64 market is getting the
lion's share of incremental improvments. Core i7 is looking more like
an Alpha every quarter. Meanwhile, Itanium is stuck at dual core and
will soon be irrelavent due to lack of modernization. I'd bet a week's
pay that Intel kills Itanium before 2012.

NSR