[Info-vax] Happy new Year !

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <hic7oe$9dh$1 at online.de>, helbig at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de
(Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) writes: 

> 4) HP will abandon VMS, all customers will have to jump ship and in a
> few years HP will sell VMS for just a few million, realising that if it
> waits any longer it won't be able to sell it at all, or only for a token
> price.  Could VMS survive as some sort of open-source project? 
> Probably, but it is not clear a) on what level and b) if this would be 
> enough to keep big customers interested enough to fund support (which 
> would make it possible for some folks to work on VMS full time who 
> otherwise would have to earn their money otherwise).  Of course, HP is 
> not obliged to open-source it, but they might.

This might have been a bit unclear; perhaps both are possible.  Someone
spends a few million on VMS, but also open-sources it.  He could still
support his "official" version of VMS, decide what goes in and what
doesn't, even though theoretically other folks could fork off from the
source and create their own branches, much like Linus Torvalds is still
respected in the Linux community, even though JF could get the source
and release his own "brand" of Linux (presumably called JFUX or
whatever). 

> What would I like to happen, best first?  3 1 2 4.  What do I think will 
> happen?  1 3 4 2.

Note that these are all relative probabilities; I didn't mention any 
absolute probabilities.  :-)