[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Neil Rieck]

On Sep 11, 6:34 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> Neil Rieck wrote:
> > HP hasn't written off
> > OpenVMS, they just ignore it because they don't know what it is
>
> My opinion is that HP top execs have been told that VMS has no future
> and that its only path is downwards. They are maintaining it and welcome
> the support dollars as long as they come but have no intention of
> spending any money to try to relauch a product with no future.
>
> And the longer this happens, the costlier it would be to bring VMS back
> to life and update more and more and more of the subsystems to get it
> into a marketable state.
>
> VMS is now like an unfinished renovation project of an office building.
> It's got a solid structure and fondation, has running water to some
> floors but just some ancient toilets and sinks (applications) in some
> places and incompatible electric system (CPU).
>
> There comes a time where it just isn't worth the effort to complete that
> renovation when you have a perfectly good and "modern" building with
> modern applications next door.

These points are correct but you must agree that execs at most Western
companies are more interested in making money rather than producing a
technically superior product. For some companies like GM, this started
in 1970 when the financial people stopped the wrench-heads from
running the company every other year. For computer companies like DEC
and Apple, this started when they got rid of their technical founders
(remember when a Pepsi-guy was running things at Apple? Remember how
everyone thought getting rid of Ken Olsen would make DEC better?). Is
is just my imagination or had Microsoft stubbed its toe a few times
since Gates finally stepped down and stepped away? Apple and Oracle
are currently doing really well while their technically-oriented
founders are occupying the top job.

In the open-source world a considerable amount of software development
is being done by the community (IBM is the biggest contributor to
Linux which makes me wonder how they account for this activity;
Microsoft recently donated >20k lines to assist with future
virtualization issues). I don't need to tell anyone here that OpenVMS
is not open-source and won't be anytime soon, so how can HP keep
OpenVMS (barely) alive while still competing with open-source? ANSWER:
move OpenVMS code maintenance to India.

Now "IF" the Asian maintainers of OpenVMS are quietly tasked to do a
port to x86-64, then we will unanimously declare that HP exec were
business geniuses. On the flip side, if the move to India was nothing
more than putting OpenVMS on temporary life support, we will all think
HP execs were just money-motivated greedy bastards.

Time will tell which way the coin falls.

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