[Info-vax] eCube OpenVMS survey

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-15 01:30:47 +0000, iloveopenvms at gmail.com said:


> Any chance of creating a module / revamping your product to integrate 
> with Visual studio?

The eCube NXTware Remote package is associated with the Java-based 
Eclipse environment.   IIRC, it'll run on Windows, Linux, OS X and 
probably some other platforms.  I would not expect that environment to 
be portable to nor integrate particularly well with the Microsoft 
Visual tools.

> One of the greatest threats to OpenVMS I see is actually the opening up 
> of Windows

Can you elaborate on this?   Also on what you mean by a threat, here?   
Microsoft Windows was on a bazillion desktops and laptops, and Windows 
Server was the foundation for many of the core communications, 
collaboration and infrastructure services — mail, DNS, authentication, 
collaboration — in many companies.   For its foibles, Windows does 
these jobs and does meet the needs of its users.

As for the threat you're reporting, I wouldn't think OpenVMS was on 
Satya Nadella's competitive dashboard.   Up until the end of July 2014, 
HP was organizing migration presentations for existing OpenVMS 
customers, after all.  Competitive products such as iOS, OS X, Android, 
Linux and the Amazon Cloud Services are far more likely on Nadella's 
dashboard.

If anything, the release of .NET and the rest of the recent changes 
seem more to be repositioning Microsoft away from Windows itself and as 
a middleware and services provider across Windows and a variety of 
non-Microsoft platforms, with back-end and hosting capabilities with 
Azure, and they're funding this with their installed base of business 
customers.

Based on my own and admittedly rather twisted world view, adding .NET 
into OpenVMS would probably help Microsoft more than VSI.

> The new MS ceo is opening up windows like there is no tomorrow and 
> interfacing to everything and pushing the tools necessary to make that 
> happen
> 
> Even .net is being open sourced

Again, can you elaborate on this?   I'd be interested how a 
cross-Windows-version platform would help OpenVMS move forward.  Per my 
understanding of the .NET framework environment,  .NET was a way for 
Microsoft to ship one set of widgets, embedding the right .NET 
framework into the package, and get it to run across a variety of 
Windows versions.    Sure, the idea of an OO framework for OpenVMS is 
useful, and the ability to embed shareable images or related into a 
newly-invented OpenVMS bundle in a newly-invented sandbox would be 
useful, but that's a long way from .NET.   As something similar to the 
common language environment and the ability to mix different 
programming languages together in an application, OpenVMS has had that 
capability forever.

Bringing over .NET or Mono to OpenVMS does get you the ability to run 
some Microsoft stuff, but not a whole lot of folks really wanted to run 
Windows stuff on other than boxes running Windows Intel x86.   From 
previous attempts, Windows on Alpha didn't do all that well, as most of 
the application folks didn't really want to support it, even with ease 
provided by the FX!32 translation.   Nor did the Microsoft COM and DCOM 
support that was added to OpenVMS fare all that well — yes, there's 
even support for a Windows-compatible registry, and $registry[w] system 
services calls 
<http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82final/4527/4527pro_096.html>.   Again, 
the folks that wanted those capabilities were also found to generally 
prefer to run those COM and DCOM applications on Windows on Intel x86.

Yes, adding .NET to OpenVMS might get some Microsoft-focused .NET apps 
ported over, but the differences in prices and features and support and 
just the added hassles of adding in and dealing with another operating 
system platform would probably leave many folks running Windows.

I'm also not entirely convinced that following Microsoft is the path 
forward for new ideas and new software and compatibilities, either.  
There seems to be a whole lot more going on over on Linux, the BSDs, OS 
X and particularly on iOS and Android mobile devices these days.  But 
that's obviously an opinion, and there are folks that are doing 
interesting stuff on Windows.

So... that's why I'm skeptical.  But in all seriousness, please do 
indicate why you think Microsoft is a thread, and .NET would help.

> Visual studio is a great development environment and MS are opening 
> this up as well and are offering 5 free seats on their cloud version 
> and their cloud version is tying all sorts of things together, such a 
> git repositories and whatever, MS certainly have turned over a new leaf 
> (I am not an MS advocate btw but I do notice the change in their 
> company line)

Upgrading the available OpenVMS IDEs — some or all of the eCube 
software, NetBeans and LSEDIT packages, or things wholly new and 
different — is certainly a key part of the success of a platform, as a 
good IDE makes the developers faster, and hopefully makes the 
developers slightly happier.   BTW, Apple gives away Xcode, and that 
IDE does quite well.    There are some other IDEs for other platforms, 
not the least of which is Eclipse, too.



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