[Info-vax] AXIS2/C, gSOAP

[Neil Rieck]

>
> Although a new CEO at HP might make changes, one should not have any
> hopes or expectations this will happen.
>

You are correct. We have all been here before and a new CEO won't make
any difference as far as OpenVMS is concerned (remember when Sue got
Carly to put on a VMS T-shirt for a photo-op? We can never expect
anymore action than this)

> VMS is an orphaned child that HP has been forced to have custody of. It
> gives it enough food to survive and that is it. HP has upheld its
> promise to continue to support the existing customer base. Alpha was
> murdered 9 years ago, and HP is still supporting it, and 8.4 is being
> released on Alpha and that Itanic thing.

North America has been under the influence of uber-capitalism for more
than a decade now. Just like Star Trek's Ferengi, all that matters is
profit (or gold-pressed latinum whatever that is). So upper-management
will only pay attention to OpenVMS if it brings them profit.

I recently attended a webinar which stated: before 1990, approximately
30% of any product's budget was placed into manufacturing a product
while 70% was going into marketing (this was definitely true of the
automobile business). This meant that any piece of crap could be
marketed to general public. (my mind also falls back to a time of
glossy color publications from a company called DEC :-) But everything
changed with the internet. Now word spreads very quickly about whether
a product is good, or more importantly, bad so companies began to flip
things around with 70% of a budget going into manufacturing with 30%
going into marketing.

The software business was handled a bit differently. Companies didn't
increase the manufacturing portion so much as they just slashed the
marketing portion. Hey, 99% of the people writing/using software were
already on the internet so the only software marketing campaigns
involved "sell software to retail consumers (Windows)" or "writing
chess programs to beat grand masters (IBM)".

>From what I can tell, OpenVMS got a triple dose of this treatment by
having the proverbial "red-headed step child" transferred to two
foster parents (Compaq then HP) while the marketing/manufacturing
budgets were interchanged. But HPQ was able to go one step further by
cutting the OpenVMS marketing budget much lower than 30%.

In fact, it was already close to zero when people like Sue Skonetski
and Terry Shannon had their HP-sponsored road-shows. But annual
corporate bonuses are based on annual measurable "increases of gross
income" or "decreases of support costs". Since people weren't auto-
magically buying more OpenVMS licenses or OpenVMS support contracts,
HP went the second route by off shoring support to Asia. Hey, why pay
someone $1k per week in North America when you can get someone in Asia
to happily accept $200 to do the same thing? And since the internet is
also used to support this kind of business, there are no increases in
shipping costs.

The one thing wrong with uber-capitalism is this: the only thing on
the planet demanding a guaranteed amount of annual growth is "cancer".
Yes, we have modeled our economy upon a disease and things won't go
well for North America until we stop this madness.

Back to the reason why you hang out at this news group: you will never
ever see OpenVMS marketed like VMS once was (or even ever). If you
want to contribute to HPQ's measurable stats, then convince people to
buy a new Integrity box with licensed OpenVMS software (and perhaps a
support contract). As far as HP is concerned, OpenVMS is just one way
to facilitate the sale of new hardware.

If you don't believe me, take a look at what is going on at the Apache
website. This is an example of very high quality software with no
advertising budget.

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