[Info-vax] Out with Hurd, in with OpenVMS

[Michael Kraemer]

JF Mezei schrieb:
> re: DEC's Compilers being more expensive because they were better.
> 
> Sorry, but there is no way that VAX-C's superiority to Microsoft's total
> development environment warranted a 10 times cost difference ($6000
> versus $600).
> 
> DEC priced itself out of academia because of policy changes to academic
> programs, and it priced itself out of commercial operations that
> developped their own software because they had to pay the full price for
> compilers. That left the developpers who were members of the always
> changing developper program, and those were abandonning VMS because of
> the perceived or real drop in market share.

I'm not sure if compiler prices really were a show stopper for larger 
organizations.
In academia one usually has campus licenses
with rather genereous discounts,
and for companies one could use floating licenses.
So for these the 1:1 price comparison might not be very realistic.

> 
> All that is river under the water now.

Water under the bridge?
(English is not my first language)

> While rebooting VMS would still be possible today, 

I have always been taught that it is not necessary to
reboot VMS (in contrast to M$ products),
but that now it is even impossible,
that's new to me ...

(scnr)

> it would take a
> visionary to push this through.  VMS still has many technologies that
> are industry leading (such as clustering). But the rest of the OS has
> languished.
> 
> Whether it would be better to translant what is still of value to Linux,
> or whether it would be better to reboot VMS, I do not know.