[Info-vax] Maybe a bit OT, maybe not.. in any case an interesting article

[JF Mezei]

To MG:  Yes, I am moving away from VMS, no, the move is not complete.
And since VMS was the foundation for a large part of my life and since
the owners of VM'S have ruined my carreer, making me a dinosaur because
VMS skills are not marketable, I have full rights to remain interested
in what happens to it.



David Froble wrote:

> Ah, so you're saying that HP should abandon a large chunk of it's customers?

They have already made that decision when they decided to not port HP-UX
beyond IA64.

The big question is how big a chunk of customers they can migrate to
their 8086 based BCS solutio s that will rely on Linux/Windows.



> Customers who may have a huge investment in their applications, which just might not be 
> portable.


Which is why they need to be given the most time to plan and port to a
new platform. Or agree to remain on the same hardware and OS version
which will likely be in maitenance mode for  a long time (like VAX and
VAX-VMS 7.3) without capacity upgrades or new features. This only works
for legacy applications and "embedded" systems (for instance a computer
strongly tied to manufactiring robots/machinery).

HP have stated publicly many times that there are no plans to port HP-UX
beyond IA64. And some of the HP employees still associated with VMS will
always deny there are plans to port VMS to x86.


In the case of alphacide, there was a promise of EV7 and a process
shrink. The later promise was abandonned and they simply upped the clock
on EV7.

Right now, we are at the same stage with Kittson the last generation of
IA64s. (and kittson+ being the equivalent to the promise of a process
shrink for EV7).


The big difference is that in the case of Alpha, Compaq came out and
brutally announced it death. But with IA64, HP has been hiding its plans
to kill IA64 since 2007 when the formal decision to end development for
IA64 was made.


> 
> And you imply that those customers will stick with HP on windoz or linux?  Well, I've seen 
> a lot of stupid people, so, perhaps some might.  But if such was done to me, I sure 
> wouldn't stick with such a vendor.

STicking with the vendor will depend on whether you trust that vendor,
and how much of a discount the vendor gives you to keep as as a customer.

The trust issue becomes difficult when it becomes public that HP has
lied to its customers about IA64 for years. So the longer tghe lie about
IA64, the less trust customers will have in HP.