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

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2014-02-05 11:20:47 +0000, JohnF said:

> Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>> Why?
> Why what???
> You yourself say below, "Demand for that [openvms] is low..."
> So why would you ask "why" about what we both said?

That was what is known as a rhetorical question.

There is no way you'll find a suite of porting tools or an emulation 
environment for free, as the folks working on these ports are all 
commercial entities, and coverage of even a fraction of the OpenVMS 
APIs is a huge project.  You might only use 5% or less of the APIs, but 
many of the applications and installations tend to use a different 5% 
of the APIs.

You might get some distance with FreeVMS, but I'd expect most folks 
won't see that as a viable long-term solution for their operations — 
the folks I've dealt with here either wanted to be platform-native to 
the target platform, or they're headed more platform-generic, or they 
need some commercial tool or product — like a database — that just 
isn't available under FreeVMS.

If you're just looking to swap out the hardware, then yes, there are 
free emulators, and there are commercial emulators.

Given you have some names of products, go have a chat with those folks 
and see if they'll work for your needs.





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