[Info-vax] Gotta be tough on kids at the moment

[Richard Maher]

Hi Neil,

"Neil Rieck" <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:294a3682-1250-436d-8e24-2353631cb78c at e15g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > 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.

Please stop picking on rangas!
>
> Neil Rieck

Cheers Richard Maher

PS. Not that I am one but my beard (when not white) is equal portions of
ginger and black