[Info-vax] Reloading device drivers on x86-64 VMS

[IanD]

On Monday, March 9, 2015 at 12:18:01 AM UTC+11, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-03-08 11:37:28 +0000, Simon Clubley said:
> 
<snip>
> 
> Remember too that aiming future OS work at what we have now is a 
> strategy that will generally fail for VSI.  They have to aim for what 
> are the then-current features and capabilities when they can deliver 
> the changes.  Not what is available now.  the whole computing market 
> moves forward, and engineering any new hardware or software product 
> release takes time, even if VSI moves toward continuous deployment[2] 
> to get the changes out to their customers more quickly.  VSI certainly 
> knows this -- though competitive operating system development is the 
> sort of project where you can definitely plow through a near-unlimited 
> budget, even presuming you could even manage and test all of what a 
> large budget would allow...  In short, how different will computing and 
> servers be in ~2018, or whenever it is that we see the x86-64 port?  
> Mobile computing completely exploded in ~six years, and Microsoft went 
> from being centrally relevant to client computing, to being a small 
> percentage of all client devices, after all.
> 

Exactly

This is why I looked at creating those threads on the 'future of OpenVMS' (under a different name here, but I've had to create this one going forward)

How to deliver tomorrow's computing in the near future while dragging the majority forward will be a balancing act

There will be those that will refuse to move forward for whatever reason, they I would assume would fall into the camp that want their world to remain the same

The world moves forward, not always embracing the best but it moves never-the-less

NeXTSTEP was great, I remember the booths at the computer shows 20 people deep just trying to get a look at it but it still failed, too much tied to specific hardware. Apple of course has made great progress piggybacking on the future thinking of NeXTSTEP

OpenVMS in my mind should be the same, forward thinking. It has lost the current war, it is pointless trying to fight the incumbent, better to regroup, call up the existing forces and give them a moral boost (just what VSI are doing) and then give the soldiers the vision of the future

I will probably get shunned for this next statement, but IF OpenVMS fails to revive itself, by forward focusing VSI could at least sell it's future technology in the open marketplace once it's running on x86-64 (AND coded for x86-128 or higher, couldn't resist this!!!)

The future, is the future of OpenVMS, the past was great and we won many battles there but we got our arses kicked in the current climate

Cloud based is going to become more and more entrenched, whatever and however we revamp OpenVMS today I think needs to have an upward expanability into the cloud, seamlessly. This gives business the impression they can forever expand their needs for future growth, how realistic that is is another matter

It doesn't ultimately matter 100% if you fail to totally deliver on the promises as long as you deliver say 80% of what was spoken of - I'm serious here, look at Google with Android, it's not a matter of total delivery it's a matter of delivering something and then polishing it up in the iterations ahead.
I know this will erk OpenVMS diehards as it smacks of illegitimacy but we need to compete on the same terms as the rest of the world otherwise we will shoot ourselves in the foot living up to a standard that the rest of the world doesn't. 

Even Apple has dropped it's standards lately, with failed releases, broken software etc but they keep saying it' all ok and they move forward on that marketing model. Learn from our enemies (yes, they are enemies, they are eating our lunch at the moment)