[Info-vax] Web Browsers on OpenVMS

[Paul Sture]

In article <kc48h3$n8v$1 at dont-email.me>,
 Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:

> On 2013-01-03 14:27:09 +0000, Bob Koehler said:
> 
> > In article <kc2apm$n9u$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman 
> > <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
> >> 
> >> Why not have a discussion with your manager or your IT folks, as they
> >> have not kept your software current for whatever reason, and they
> >> haven't provided a tool that you're looking for.
> > 
> >    They do have a process in place to keep things somewhat up to date.
> >    But they don't force updates until they have to.
> > 
> >> If your OS X system is locked down, then you'll need administrative
> >> access to install Xcode.  If you have that access, ask to borrow a
> >> distro from IT.
> > 
> >    Only IT has admin access.
> > 
> >> That you're still running 10.6 is a comparatively inauspicious start.
> >> While there are cases where that's appropriate to have boxes still
> >> running 10.6 around, your IT folks (and you) will want to have a plan
> >> for getting to 10.7 or 10.8, or migrating off of the OS X platform, or
> >> whatever is locally appropriate.
> > 
> >    10.7 is known to break some of our COTS applications.
> 
> 
> Yeah; so it appears you're in a centrally-managed enterprise IT 
> organization or other analogous entity, and one that's not exactly 
> pushing the envelope on version and tool support; 10.7 and 10.8 have 
> been out for a while, so that COTS appears to be well and truly stuck, 
> and for whatever reason.  Not forcing updates while two revisions back 
> isn't exactly burning up the upgrade cycle, after all — Apple doesn't 
> play in that old-support market.

There is also a danger here with COTS support for older versions from 
third parties.  Some will happily support older versions and indeed will 
go quite a few OS versions back, others will not.

More relevant to a privately owned system here than Bob's office 
situation, but some third party suppliers will scrub out all traces of 
older versions from download sites, others won't.  At one point 
iTerminal suffered from this, and I was left with a version which 
exhibited problems.  I have tended to hoard download images of known 
working software since that happened.

-- 
Paul Sture