[Info-vax] Thanks but no thanks!

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <4c55b4f1$0$32449$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
<jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes: 

> Mark Daniel wrote:
> 
> > For open source, the major hurdle for VMS is its minute market share and 
> > correspondingly proportioned user community.  There's little or no 
> > critical mass to make open source work well
> 
> There are big efforts made by the community. Mr SMS does the ZIP port
> and maintenance for instance. There are the maintainers of the WASD and
> OSU web servers etc etc.

While these might be open source in the sense that one can have the 
source code and perhaps even legally distribute it, in the cases 
mentioned above, essentially one person maintains the code (though 
perhaps with input from other folks).  The OSU and WASD are, at least 
for all practical purposes, VMS-only.  So, for both of these reasons, 
they deviate from the typical bazaar approach to open-source development 
(i.e. they are more like cathedrals).  To be sure, ZIP/UNZIP is on a 
wide variety of platforms, but AFAIK the VMS stuff is done essentially 
by SMS.