[Info-vax] VMS port to x86

[Michael Kraemer]

David Froble schrieb:
> Keith Parris wrote:
> 
>>
>> We know from http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/7-1623010.pdf 
>> that as of the end of 2008 Martin Fink said the VMS business was less 
>> than $100M (although one could argue he probably wasn't including 
>> Services, Storage, Networking, etc.).
> 
> 
>  From some perspectives, that is still a rather large chunk of change.

 From the CEO's perspective (the only one relevant here),
it would be less than 0.1% of HP's revenue.

> If there is no future for VMS, then you (HP) can kiss that $100M 
> good-by.  Frankly, there are many companies that do not gross that much 
> in a year.  Seems small business is viable.
> 
> I wonder how many $100M HP can kiss off before there is no HP ??

more than 1000.

>> Still, can the OpenVMS organization realistically afford to spend some 
>> number that's probably on the order of at least one year's total 
>> revenues to do an x86 port?
> 
> 
> Again, if they don't, they kiss good-by that revenue.

So what, if keeping that revenue causes nothing but trouble?

>>
>> VMS is viewed by the marketplace in general as legacy, out of date, 
>> old-fashioned, or at least irrelevant.
> 
> What marketplace?  The market that wants tablets and smart phones, or 
> the market that used VMS and such before there was PCs, notebooks, smart 
> phones, and tablets?

The marketplace that (to some extent) used VMS in the 1980s
and since then uses Unix[oid]s, mainframes, "i", etc.?

> This is the problem with looking at the "marketplace".  If that is all 
> that matters, then tablets and smart phones are the way to go.  You're 
> going to run your business on a tablet, huh?  Don't think so.

There are more choices than tablets and VMS.