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

[Arne Vajhøj]

Neil Rieck wrote:
> 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 ...
> 
> The only people in "the market" are bean counters and the only reason
> they want Linux is because it is free.

That helps.

>                                  These people make no distiction
> between purchase price and total cost of ownership.

Maybe, but comparing TCO would give the same result.

 >                                                     If OpenVMS was
> free (or near free) they would want it instead of Linux.

No. Not at this time. In 1999 it may have.

> 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.

Itanium is probably very close to being effectively killed i the
sense that they completely will give up trying to keep up with
x86-64.

But my guess is that they will continue to sell Itanium systems
to at least 2017.

Arne