[Info-vax] Building for Customers, Revenue

[David Froble]

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
> In article <lv1jr9$ecd$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
> <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes: 
> 
>> Best case and assuming a massive budget for development, that's most of 
>> a decade of very intensive work to bring the server features forward to 
>> what will then be current, and probably twice that effort would need to 
>> be invested to create a viable desktop and probably a desktop that 
>> too few folks would want.
> 
> How would the effort compare to the effort of porting to x86?

Not the same thing.  A port to x86 allows a future for VMS.  A future 
for something unique.  On the other hand, there are plenty of desktop 
environments now available, and they do a much better job than a VMS 
based desktop.  That of course depends on the applications, but, you're 
talking about browsers.

>> VSI is undoubtedly going to focus on and cater to the VMS installed 
>> base, allowing the installed base to do what they do now, hopefully 
>> better, and hopefully on commodity hardware.

Indeed!

> I would hope so.  But many at VSI, and many customers, remember "desktop 
> to datacenter".  I think that's still a good idea today.

And some may also "remember" living in the cave ....

>> Desktops are too large a project, and competing against folks that can 
>> give away their software is difficult.

And, if all that is done, after expenditure of gobs of work and money, 
is something the same, why should anyone change.  It would be a waste of 
the work and money.

> I don't think that VSI should compete against "regular" desktops, but 
> rather offer enough desktop support so that VMS folks don't have to run 
> something else just for desktop stuff.

Specifics ???

>> There just aren't enough Phillip-like customers in the world.
> 
> I don't know.  Just a few weeks ago, anyone who thought that there would 
> be a viable port of VMS to x86, or even Poulson support, in the 
> foreseeable future would have been deemed delusional.  :-)

That is true.  But there are still many using VMS.  How many are still 
trying to use VMS on the desktop?  Will you need the fingers of both 
hands to count them?

>> Pretty much everybody already has a non-VMS desktop environment, Phillip.
> 
> But even if they do, it is a pain to constantly transfer files between 
> it and VMS.

Ok, you need to defend that statement.  FTP (sorry Steve) does the job. 
  I do it all the time.

>> Your isolation from general computing and your ability to deal with 
>> hassles and complexity having myself kept a VMS desktop for
>> ~20 years is clearly prodigious. 
> 
> :-)
> 
> I do have some experience with other systems, desktop and otherwise, but 
> at home do almost all desktop stuff from VMS.  It would be nice to be 
> able to do it all.
> 

Nice?  It would be nice to grow a new body part, when one is damaged. 
If the money is going to be spent, maybe it should be spent on something 
worth doing, such as finding the keys to aging, and how to reverse it, 
and other such things that could be much better for people.  A VMS 
desktop, to fix a problem that doesn't really exist, well, humans are 
good at wasting money, effort, and time, so from that perspective, I 
guess you can continue to hope for a VMS desktop.