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

[David Froble]

JF Mezei wrote:
> On 14-02-02 07:03, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> 
>> Note the difference between "VMS" n the first part and "BCS OS"
>> in the second part. That was HPUX and that has been verified several
>> times. Last I heard of it was at some HP seminar.
> 
> My sources told me that all 3 were evaluated for porting costs.

Well, yeah, maybe an hour was spent looking at prior VMS ports.  I 
cannot feel that HP was very serious about VMS, and now that is rather 
apparent.

HP-UX has always been HP's main concern.  VMS barely an after-thought.

> The Oracle documents only spoke of HP-UX because the HP lawsuit was
> about Oracle hurting HP-UX sales.  (hard to claim damages on VMS when
> you don't market the product, expect no sales and tell everyone at
> conferences you only expect the remainiing installed base to use VMS).
> 
> Remember that this was during a period where Intel signalled it wanted
> to pull the plug on IA64. HP had to look at its options. In negotiating
> with Intel, HP would have to know what was involved in porting all BCS
> OS to the 8086, versus paying Intel to keep IA64 on life support.
> 
> Before talking to Intel, HP would need to know what special features (if
> any)  would have to be added to 8086 to support its 3 BCS OS.  HP-UX is
> the problem child due to endianess, so HP would have had to negotiate
> the costs of adding big endian to 8086 vs costs of converting HP-UX to
> little endian.
> 
> So yes, HP would have had to take a serious look at the cost of porting
> all 3 OS, and technical feasability so it could go to Intel with "if you
> don't continue IA64, you will have to pay us $x to port the 3 OS to the
> 8086". 

BA HA HA HA HA (or however it's typed) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What world are you living in?

Where did you ever get an idea that Intel would ever be liable to HP for 
any porting?

It's stupid statements like this that ruins your credibility.

> For such negotiations, you don't want to forget the less
> important OS, you want to show the costs are going to be as high as
> possible in order to negotiate a good deal with Intel.
> 
> 
> Consider when Compaq bought Digital. It quickly announced that it would
> port NSK to Alpha staring with EV7 once it got lockstep. This means that
> NSK engineers had done an evaluation of porting to Alpha well before the
> merger was announced, would have met with Alpha engineering and the
> costs of this endeavour calculated on both sides.
> 
> Same thing when Capellas announced the Alphacide. key people within VMS
> engineering would have been involved in evaluating this to look at costs
> and technical feasability so that Capellas could negotiate the big
> suitcase full of money Compaq would get to help fund the port.
> 
> People will deny this ever happened because they either didn't know who
> was involved in that evaluation, or they were involved and signed an NDA
> where they woudl deny this ever happened. But it happened.
> 
> Note that while Palmer's deal with Intel did involve porting
> Digital-Unix to IA64, it didn't touch VMS, but in that time frame, I
> suspect VMS was looked at from a feasability point of view. So perhaps
> it only needed a refresh for the Alphacide to update it according to
> final specs for IA64 and manpower costs,
>