[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bob Koehler wrote:
> 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?
> 

Keeping bad code a secret in order to prevent hacking is, to say the 
least, a poor way to do business.  Sun has made most of the Solaris 
source code available for comment, criticism, and improvement.  The 
stuff that's still not public belongs in whole or in part to third 
parties and is used by Sun under license.