[Info-vax] 2013 OpenVMS Boot Camp

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <kd2o5p$h7n$3 at reader1.panix.com>,
	JohnF <john at please.see.sig.for.email.com> writes:
> Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
>> JohnF <john at please.see.sig.for.email.com> wrote:
>>> Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>> > DTL <didier.morandi at gmail.com> writes:
>>> >> VMS is dead, buried and forgotten. Well, not for the US DOD, 
>>> > Any use of VMS within DOD is minimal and trivial.
>>> 
>>> I know nothing about it, but thought a large part of the
>>> reason for HP's ongoing VMS support was very long term
>>> contractual support obligations to DOD inherited from DEC.
>>> Is that not right? Or, if right, what's the short version
>>> of those obligations? And how quickly is VMS support likely
>>> to fade away after they expire?
>> 
>> That was the story a decade or so ago.
> 
> Okay, so is/was that story correct, or not?
> (and thanks for the additional info below...)

I have heard many times, here, about these long term contracts but having
worked both sides of the government contracting game I know that there is
no such thing as a contract that extends beyond the end of a Fiscal Year.
One cannot commit funds they don't have so contracts tend to be one year
long with options to renew inthe future.  In most cases both sides have
an out.  I seriously dowbt there are any contracts made with DEC that have
not expired many years ago.  The only truly serious VMS contract in DOD
I have eevr been aware of (and that includes not only my DA experience,
but also my time with DISA) was JStars and as should have been seen by
my other recent posting, after years of trying to get rid of it, this
year they finally will.  The fact that DISA, who is responsible for the
certification and security of all DOD IS, stopped caring about VMS should
have put this to rest years ago.  The last Versions of VMS DISA even
looked at were 7.3 for VAX and Alpha and there has never been a Security
Checklist for an Itanium System (I know that 7.3 is 7.3 no matter what
it runs on, but DISA doesn't look at things that way.)  And these are from
2006.  I even went so far as to ask if they were interested in making a
more up-to-date version when I was there in 2009 and was told they had no
interest and were planning on dropping VMS completely anyway.  One would
think this spoke volumes, but apparently, not here.

> 
>> There may of course be systems 
>> in use which are not seen by normal military staff, but are critical for 
>> the manufacture and testing of military hardware.  Planes tend to have a 
>> fairly long lifespan, and that can get extended beyond original plans.
>> 
>>>    Actually, HP's support of the VMS hobbyist program seems
>>> unexpectedly pleasant, so to speak, and I doubt it falls
>>> under any DOD contract requirement. So it's hard, at least
>>> for me, to infer HP's exact attitude towards VMS.
>> 
>> There are probably many flavours of attitude within a corporation as 
>> large as HP.
> 

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>