[Info-vax] The dangers of being too emotionally involved, was: Re: How about RdB for x86 VMS?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2014-09-03, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>
> What is going on here, folks?
>
> VMS is looking pretty good right now.  This for the first time in a 
> long time, too.
>

What's caused you to suddenly change your tune from your previous
(accurate) comments about how much work is required to make VMS viable
to newcomers in today's world ?

> Some folks posting here in comp.os.vms still need to find some problems 
> with this, or some reason to panic.
>

Some people might be asking questions which don't seem important to
you but are clearly important to them.

When you are heavily emotionally involved in something, it's all too
easy to convince yourself of an altered reality in which "everything
is all ok and if we make something available everyone is going to
buy it because, well, because _we_ think it's great.".

The people at the core of VSI are clearly _heavily_ emotionally
involved in VMS. That's good because it gives them motivation. It's
also potentially bad because it can easily cloud your judgement if
you are not careful.

The people asking questions may care about VMS but not be so emotionally
involved and are looking at VMS in the context of the marketplace as a
whole. This means those questions are a good indicator of the things the
future customers are going to be asking and if you can't answer them,
you've got a problem.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world