[Info-vax] Moving away from OpenVMS

[johnson.eric at gmail.com]

> My question is, if you still have VMS, then 
> why are you messing with the other "junk"? 

I see a couple of values with the approach. 

First, one could begin to draw benefit from the rapid pace of x86 performance gains without first disentangling oneself from the VMS APIs that you might be leveraging.  It would be like an out of box CPU upgrade.  

Second, the migration approach could be done with less rearchitecting of a current system. 

Third, the migration approach avoids flag day cutovers. To me, flag day cutovers are the worst because you don't really know what the new world is like until you are there but when you are there, you are committed and going back is no more appealing than staying.

For me the main motivation of the idea is to provide an avenue to capture the gains offered by the x86 world which has (to me) clearly surpassed the itanium. I would think that systems that are not hungry for CPU upgrades may not see value in the approach. 

I suspect the other half of your question is - then how does one finally cut ties to VMS. But wasn't 100% if that was the question or why begin to go towards this weird hybrid run time with a foot in both worlds. 

EJ