[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[Neil Rieck]

On Nov 8, 8:39 am, Arne Vajhøj <a... at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> Neil Rieck wrote:
> > On Nov 7, 9:27 pm, Arne Vajhøj <a... at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> >> Neil Rieck wrote:
> >>> Since any idiot can put up a web page these days, you know it all
> >>> can't be true. So imagine my surprise when I bumped into this:
> >>>http://radsoft.net/rants/20040831,00.shtml
> >>> <quote>Dave always wanted to rewrite VMS in C. He hated Unix but loved
> >>> C. As soon as he'd finished VMS he suggested the rewrite. He was
> >>> turned down flat. Several years later he found himself in Seattle and
> >>> essentially was doing the rewrite in C when word came DEC were tired
> >>> of him.</quote>
> >>> This article contains lots of other (possibly) questionable facts, but
> >>> think about the statement above "rewrite VMS in C". If this had
> >>> happened, we would have VMS or OpenVMS on any platform including
> >>> x86-64
> >> If the various owners of VMS had believed in the market for
> >> VMS/x86-64, then I don't think getting Bliss and Macro-32 for
> >> x86-64 would have been the showstopper. My guess is that it
> >> would have been a small part of the overall project. Porting
> >> an OS to a new platform is more than just building the
> >> source code.
>
> > True, but if Cutler wanted to immediately write VMS in C then I'm
> > thinking he must had a good reason for it. We all know that UNIX
> > enjoyed an immediate debugging when it was first rewritten from
> > assembler to "C". I wonder (in hindsight) if all these secondary and
> > tertiary components (like BLISS and MACRO) might be an indication of
> > too many chefs in the VMS kitchen :-)
>
> Today OS in C may be the standard.
>
> But back in the mid 70's where the VMS decision were made, then
> it was not the standard.
>
> And my understanding is that VMS inherited this from
> the PDP-11 OS's.
>
> And when it was decided for them, then C was not available
> (at least according to many C was invented to port Unix
> to PDP-11).
>
> Arne

As I have mentioned to others privately, if DEC would have listened to
Cutler and rewritten VMS in C, then porting VMS to Alpha, Itanium and
anything else would already have saved them tons of money.

Now if it is HP's intention to never port OpenVMS ever again, then
they should just sit back and milk it for all it's worth. However,
they might wish to consider tasking their Indian code-warriors to
quietly start a conversion to C. Even if the project was never fully
completed, future code maintenance and porting efforts would benefit
from this action.

NSR