[Info-vax] VLF: The 36th Anniversary Communique from the VMS Liberation Front

Fri Oct 25 01:32:49 EDT 2013

A 36th Anniversary Communique from the VMS Liberation Front

Greetings comp.os.vms collegians,

1. AYBABTU

"All Your Base Are Belong To Us."

The VLF, the VMS Liberation Front DELTA:: node, have always wanted to
transmit that in a communique, and clearly, we have just done so,
however, unfortunately the use of it is not justified, since we still
have not established the necessary conditions and resources to rescue
VMS from mind-share oblivion and installation extinction in a
conclusive manner.

We can but try.

2. Prefatory Remarks

http://is.gd/The_35th_Anniversary_Of_VMS

Unfortunately, due to complex analogue world concerns, the VLF have
not been as productive as they would have liked in the intervening
year, since the 35th anniversary of VMS. Even this 36th anniversary
communique will not be as planned and intended; it is merely a
'heart-beat' and 'pulse' communique, largely to signal that the VLF
project is not moribund and that we are still on job.

Whilst I cannot speak for my esteemed colleague, Subcommandante
BYPASS, on this particular matter, I, Subcommandante XDelta, am
ashamed to admit that I have not been attending with any continuity of
diligence, to the reading of the annals of the transactions of the
comp.os.vms collegiate, in the last year - however I do note the
<dansabrservices at yahoo.com> spear-heading an initiative to take over
the VMS business from HP and make a real, honest, go of it; this is
probably the best prospective development to have occurred in the last
decade - may it come to pass, the VLF salute him, and advise getting
the stock exchanges that still use VMS, on board with the project.

I also note with, not inconsiderable, admiration, the research and
development of the DCL debugger.

We in the VLF, may have, collectively, one foot in the grave, but the
other is still dancing a lively jig on the grassy verge beside it.
However we remain acutely aware of the decrement of time remaining on
our finitary system clocks, and we remain concerned and despairing for
the grand-children and the future generations of humanity that they
may lose the conceptual and functionality excellence and literacy of
the VMS operating system forever, to their profound intellectual
impoverishment.

Which, of course, is also in the fore-front of the minds of the VMSen
(VMS Memory Stewards) of the VMS (VMS Mind-share Society) on
comp.os.vms and elsewhere.

In the larger context, and bigger picture, of the planetary situation,
we are also gravely concerned for the grand-children and the future
generations with regards to global-warming, ecological degradation and
collapse, species extinction, the despoiling of civil society, the
NSA/PRISM intelligence-industrial complex, to name but a few of the
big burning issues, and the corruption of governance cultures integral
and prudential competence in the face of all such challenges.

With reference to 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', the
'Inherent Pirsigian Quality', appears to be leaching out of so many
aspects of the planetary reality.

However in the context of the proceedings of the comp.os.vms
collegiate, we will not digress further on such matters, and return to
that feather in our caps and volitional brick in our backpacks, which
are the specific challenges for the VLF project.

3. Hardware Emulator Releases

Please refresh your memories on the context, raison d'etre, vision,
mission, and purpose of the VMS Liberation Front:

http://is.gd/LiBREVMS

Thank you.

You might as well charge or refresh your tankard with a quality
lagered product, while you are at it.

The VLF Release History:

2012-10-25: 

LiBREVMS.LMFGEN.OpenVMS.Tru64.OSF1.ULTRIX.v1.2.WinALL.x86.x64.KEYGEN-VLF
Stromasys.CHARON-VAX_Xx_66x0.v4.0.Build.122-04.Retail.WinALL.x86.x64.Cracked-VLF
Stromasys.CHARON-VAX_Xx_66x0.v4.1.Build.134-02.Retail.Win7.W2K8.x86.x64.Cracked-VLF
Stromasys.CHARON-AXP_4100_DS_ES_GS.v4.1.Build.129-04.Retail.WinALL.x64.Cracked-VLF

These four releases established a basic basis for which our beloved
Vernon, could be preserved, at existing revision levels, on existing
DEC architectures, in perpetuity.

For the 36th anniversary of VMS, we now also release:

2013-10-25: 

Stromasys.CHARON-AXP.v4.2.Build.142-01.68704122.Retail.GNU.Linux.x64.Cracked-VLF
Stromasys.CHARON-11.v2.5.Build.117.Retail.WinALL.x86.Cracked-VLF

As a modest, yet significant, extension to that basis foundation, with
the inclusion of a GNU/Linux CHARON-AXP hardware emulator, delivering
independence from Microsoft windows for AXP/VMS at least.

Although the CHARON-11, PDP-11 hardware emulator is not on the
critical path of the VLF project, none the less, all good VMS men
should know what its significance is and what to do with it to
preserve and extend the PDP-11 intellectual heritage of the Digital
Equipment Corporation, for future generations to study.

The CHARON-11 emulator was retired by Stromasys as of December 2006.

The CHARON-11 emulator was liberated by the VLF as of October 2013.

All the VLF releases can be downloaded from the Usenet Binaries
Newsgroups:

http://is.gd/VLF_RELEASES

4. Some Observations On Stromasys

Although, to date, the majority of the VLF releases have been CHARON
hardware emulators, that is because, firstly, we had a, sadly, finite,
but, fortunately,substantial, mother-lode of CHARON retail installers
and secondly because the stable, immaculate, preservation of Vernon
mandated the most exacting hardware emulators be used. The VLF do not
have a particular axe (neither VAX nor AXP) to grind with Stromasys,
they are entitled to make a business from the slow, gradual death of
the VMS installation ecology, if there is a business to be made.

What Stromasys (or any other corporation) is not entitled to do,
however, is to encourage the slow, gradual, death of VMS, and to
sabotage its rebirth and renaissance, to suit their business model -
not that we are asserting that Stromasys is, we were more thinking of
Microsoft.

A useful metaphor is to consider a majestic tall Redwood or a mighty,
Yggdrasil class, Ash tree that has been ring-barked and clear-felled,
but not totally uprooted, despite the worst of intentions. The roots
and stump represent the VMS architecture and engineering ecology, the
trunk and branches represent the installation ecology and the leaves
the expertise ecology of the VMS operating system.

The Stromasys corporate logo resembles a fungus that you might find
growing on a cut tree trunk, feasting happily on rotting wood, doing
what comes naturally for fungus, in accordance with Nature's laws in
the great cycles of life - you could hardly criticise the fungus.

The trunk stump and root system represents the evergreen "self
regenerating" principle of the VMS architecture and engineering, ever
ready and able to sprout a new CPU architecture trunk, well able to
reconnect to the old, existing, trunk and branches to restore the tree
to the vertical with full, original, vigour, if only it was not being
starved of nutrition and water, chain-sawed, napalmed, nuked, and
otherwise poisoned, amputated, and attenuated by various vested
interests. HP are the legal owners and the stewards of the VMS
intellectual property, but they do not actually command VMS asset
management policy, which is determined by remote-control internal
puppetry by external third parties in the considered forensic opinion
of the VLF.

Even the most apt and adept analogy has its limitations: Stromasys is
not a fungus, but a for-profit corporation, which has built an
extremely successful business on the slow death of the tree trunk of
the historical installation base of VMS; their CHARON emulator
technology is outstanding, no doubt about it; they probably employ the
greatest concentration of ex-digits on the planet; they have extensive
and deep expertise of VMS hardware and software architectures in their
direct employment.

The remaining VMS installation customer base are all rusted on, they
are highly motivated, either they want to keep using VMS for part or
all of their enterprise computing, or they have to.

Those enterprises that have divested themselves of VMS except for
legacy VMS applications running on CHARON virtualised hardware, would
find it easier to cultivate and maintain human expertise, in the long
term, for their legacy systems, if only they could deploy and
implement VMS systems on modern hardware and CPU architectures that
have a future for their other enterprise computing needs; if a legacy
system isn't broken, then don't fix it, and don't migrate it; keep on
keeping on and keep your VMS expertise gainfully employed,
continuously practicing and deepening their VMS skills, either on the
legacy systems or elsewhere in the enterprise.

Given the substantial capitalisation and expertise that it has
accumulated, Stromasys would be a logical candidate to purchase the
VMS asset from HP; it would not contradict their existing business
model but complement it and without veering into "business speak" the
synergies are self-evident.

Stromasys could make a fortune from the slow death of the VAX and AXP
hardware with their virtualisation technologies and also make a
fortune from the rebirth and renaissance of VMS ported to mainstream
Intel and ARM, 32 and 64 bit CPU architectures.

http://www.stromasys.com/about-us/

As a first course of business, after taking ownership of the VMS
intellectual property, Stromasys could and should, at the very least,
for instance:

(a) Open source VMS and the condist layered products - a logical step
to take, particularly given the obvious business opportunities for a
visibly trustable VMS in concert with its excellent security
infrastructure, in a post NSA/PRISM world; whilst the source-code
would be open, they could still market their own forked builds of VMS,
built from their own code-repositories in their data-stores that they
physically control. The research and development, refinement and
evolution of VMS should never again be suppressed by the cupidity,
stupidity or wilful mediocrity of any management regime, past, present
or future.

When was the last time that any serious research and development of
VMS architecture done? - a decade ago, two decades ago? Microsoft
operating systems are still playing catch up to where VMS was in the
mid to late eighties; Microsoft have had a two decade head-start,
which is more than enough time, it is high time that VMS, as a
proprietary-hybrid returned to the stage and gave Microsoft operating
systems a real challenge, on all CPU architectures where Microsoft
operating systems abide.

(b) Do a four way, simultaneous, port of VMS to Intel i386 and
x64/AMD64 as well as ARM-32 and ARM-64; to i386 to skewer,
conclusively, two decades of corporate dishonesty and duplicity, the
'Itanium Slum Scam', but also to tap the vast market of 32 bit
computers still being used in non-first world countries - particularly
in their government, educational and institutional sectors. VMS is
perfectly capable of running the full spectrum of computing tiers,
from the mainframe to the mobile phone, and all tiers in-between. In
implementing a four way, simultaneous port, done immaculately and
impeccably in accordance with the "VMS Way", the VMS architectural
infrastructure will be established so that VMS portability can never
be questioned, misrepresented or lied about ever again. 

(c) Design and market the VMS equivalent of the "Raspberry Pi" as
multi-core ARM CPU computing units, that have two gigabit ethernet
ports each, one for networking, the other for computer interconnect
clustering. Such cheap and cheerful clustering lego-bricks
(dimensioned 1 by 4 by 9, of course) would be a boon both for the
student, the hobbyist, the computing science academy, and the IT
departments of enterprises wishing to model, design and study large
VMS clusters.

(d) Re-implement an analogue of the 'VAXELN' RT/OS for Intel i386,
x64/AMD64 and ARM-32, ARM-64, and then port all of the CHARON hardware
emulators to it, on all of those CPU architectures. Historically,
Stromasys or SRI (Software Resources International), ever deploying a
CHARON on a Microsoft Windows operating system, must have been driven
from the marketing department droids, it was certainly not based on
any technical merit in regards to a truly reliable foundation for
business critical legacy systems. They should have deployed all of
their CHARONS on their own bespoke GNU/Linux from the get to, or
deployed the obvious and logical proprietary resource of the
outstanding QNX RT/OS.

(e) Design and implement a VMS/VM to put Microsoft operating systems
back in their rightful place - safe and secure, virtualised, out of
harms way, within a VMS frame-work.

(f) Besides supporting legacy HP hardware, establish partnerships with
quality hardware vendors such as Lenovo; the acme and zenith of
computing would be a Lenovo ThinkPad running VMS natively, for
example. Stromasys would make its real money from the VMS asset in the
provision of authentic and genuine, provably deliverable, technical
support for BCS, business critical systems.

Once word gets around that VMS has a real future and is again a viable
proprietary-hybrid alternative, enterprise refugees from Microsoft
will start to slowly, at first, but surely, trickle in and accumulate
and the installation, applications, and expertise ecologies will start
to repopulate and rebuild; solid income growth rings would start to
accrete back on the trunk of the VMS tree.

The reader may think that I have accidentally ingested one of the
grand-children's 'health' cookies - you would be mistaken - it is the
grounded, blue sky kite flying envisioning of a possible future that
can be made probable either by Stromasys, or a passionate individual
spear-heading the initiative or a consortium of the existing
enterprise VMS users.

One does not have to be a few opcodes short of a full instruction set
or a few addressing modes short of orthogonality to see this
potential.

This has been but the shallowest of shallow shoals of envisioning, do
not let any nay-saying straw-man timorous disingenuity of intellect
that may arise in the mind of the reader cloud either judgement or
imagination of what the potential is.

5. In Conclusion

Although we have much more that merits saying on the subject of
necessary and exigent VMS activism, we will leave it to another
communique in the near future.

We cordially and convivially remind the reader to not waste attention,
time, and energy, criticising the VLFs strategies and methods, rather
think of something better to do in regards to VMS activism, and to
then go and actually do it.

Our reasoning and logic, of course, can be constructively examined for
possible fault; however good luck with that!

The VMS Liberation Front, once again, thank you all, the VMS of the
VMS, VMS Memory Stewards of the VMS Mind-share Society, the
comp.os.vms collegiate, for your collective attention.

Best regards,

Subcommandante XDelta,
p.p. Subcommandante BYPASS

The VMS Liberation Front
mailto:vlf at hush.com
Manifesto:   http://is.gd/VLF_MANiFESTO
Releases:    http://is.gd/VLF_RELEASES
Communiques: http://is.gd/VLF_COMMUNiQUES
In VMS We Trust

$!------------------------ damn straight -------------------------!$
$ opprobrium/level=kittens/mode=conniptions/input=VLF:/output=NL: !$
$!------------------------- enough said --------------------------!$