[Info-vax] Reimplementing VMS, was: Re: HP adds OpenVMS Mature Product Support beyond the end of Standard Support

[JF Mezei]

On 14-02-02 14:25, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Thus this false rumor spreading needs to be stopped.

Your speculation that HP DID NOT evaluate of port of VMS to 8086 has
less validity than my statement that it did evaluate it even when I
remove what I was told from an informed source.

>From a business point of view, when HP is negotiating the end of IA64
with Intel, it makes perfect business sense to evaluate the
costs/complexity of porting  the software that relies on the platform
being killed.

If evaluation of the port of VMS was not done, it means that the
decision to kill VMS had been made closer to 2004 than to 2009 when
dismantlement of VMS engineering began. (final firings were early 2010)



What I was suggesting is that the group who meets/talks to HP about the
future of VMS request some of the results (at technical level) of the
feasability study to port VMS to x86.

The work to find a way to implement the 4 protection levels, interrupts,
drivers etc may have already been done, at least in concept, and this
would save a tremendous amount of time. No point wasting the work that
was already done by the then very qualified VKS engineering team/person.

It is also possible that work miught have uncovered a big show stopper.
(although doubtful),

Would the group be hurt by asking for this ? If the worse that can
happen is either "sorry, you can't have that" or "sorry, it doesn't
exist", what have you got to lose ?