[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Neil Rieck]

On Sep 10, 3:52 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> Neil Rieck schrieb:
>
>
>
> > You bring up an interesting point that has been in the back of my head
> > for months now. HP seems to push Windows, Linux and HPUX more than
> > anything else.
>
> No surprise here. Windoze and Linux are almost inevitable
> for a vendor, and HP-UX is their genuine product, while VMS is n.i.h.
>
> > Forgetting about Windows and Linux for a moment, what
> > does HP charge for OS and compiler licenses in the HPUX world?
>
> > If HPUX licenses are lower than OpenVMS then wouldn't this be a form
> > of unnatural selection against OpenVMS?
>
> Why? See above. And maybe it costs more to develop/maintain VMS.
>
> > (because bean counters will
> > always point you to the cheaper product; that's why our IS/IT people
> > keep leaning on us to switch to Windows Server 2003).
>
>  From what?
>
> > The only way to
> > get OpenVMS licensing on a level playing field with HPUX (or anything
> > else) is to announce to the world that OpenVMS prices will drop a
> > certain percent every week for the next 60 months.
>
> Assuming the world knows or even takes care about VMS.
> And why not just lower the price at once?
>
> > The only down side
> > to this is guaranteeing that there will still be an OpenVMS market in
> > 60 months.
>
> > And while on my soap box, I know that anyone can scrape together money
> > each year for a Connect membership then pay/apply for OpenVMS hobbyist
> > licenses which will expire after every year. (I'm not sure how you get
> > a hobbyist license for HPUX).
>
> No need for that. If you grab an HP-UX capable workstation,
> you have the license. If you manage to grab HP-UX media,
> you can install at least the base OS, there are no PAKs.
> Native compilers et al are a different story.
>
> > Anyway, at the end of the day this is
> > still a bigger pain than just freely downloading Ubuntu, Linux,
> > Solaris or SUN Studio.
>
> Yep.
>
> > Maybe HP should just go the extra mile and
> > allow people to freely download OpenVMS for non-commercial use. Why?
> > How will the newbies ever get involved with OpenVMS if they don't get
> > a free shot at trying it out? This is just food-for-thought.
>
> Put away those silly PAKs
> (or at least offer a general, unlimited one, like that for Tru64),
> and charge for the original OS media a processing fee, compatible
> with the price of a hobbyist's hardware.
>
> > Neil Rieck
> > Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
> > Ontario, Canada.
> >http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/

I agree with all your points except the last one. While it is true
that most vendors (Redhat, Sun, etc.) will sell you optical media for
$10 or less, almost all of them allow for immediate free download. In
somes cases (Red Hat, Ubuntu, Linux) they have co-opted friends all
around the planet (mostly universities) to serve-up free binary
downloads from locations closer to the downloader. In the case of
others (Sun, Oracle, etc.) they allow free anytime downloads from
their corporate servers.

Let's all be realistic here, OpenVMS just isn't that popular in the
hacker/hobbyist community so HP could (if they wanted to) offer free
downloads of OpenVMS binaries NOW to anyone at anytime from their
corporate web site. There probably wouldn't be any noticeable increase
in their internet bandwidth usage.

I'm not sure who pays for the infrastructure costs at:
http://www.openvmshobbyist.org
but if it isn't HP then HP Marketing should pick up all the costs
because HP in in for some trouble when all us OpenVMS types retire.
Why? Because the younger generation coming up behind us has never
heard of OpenVMS which means that more of HP's market will wither on
the vine. (I am partially quoting the subject of this news thread :-)

Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/