[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Bob Koehler]

In article <h9i2ib$rnr$3 at gemini.csx.cam.ac.uk>, rf10 at cl.cam.ac.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
> 
> i never quite saw it, but a colleague who did systems programming for
> my team on rsx 11-m said the internal structure of rsx "felt" very
> similar to those modules of vms "signed" by dave cutler.

   Dave Cutler's I/O subsystem design shows up in RSX, VMS, and Windows.
   Which is the only thing Windows has in common with a real OS.

> 
> (wouldn't it be nice if commercial operating systems nowadays arrived
> with source listings?  vms was the last such that i saw.)

   You can get the sources to Linux, and make your own listings. 
   Problem left to the student of arcane command syntax:  how to get
   gcc to produce listings.  Solaris is also supposed to open source,
   but I'm not about to get to know Sun's C compiler that well.
   
   The last time I checked, DEC's VMS source listing CD was selling at
   about the same price as HP's HP-UX source listings.  But for HP-UX
   you first had to show you owned a UNIX source licence, which was
   somewhat more expensive, and the system you read or stored the files
   on was not allowed to be connected to any network except electric
   power.

   With all the holes people find in Windows now, can you imagine what
   major increase in the insanity would take place if they had the
   source listings to help them?