[Info-vax] VMS Software Inc. OpenVMS 8.4-1H1 Boots on i4 System

[lists at openmailbox.org]

On Fri, 20 Mar 2015 00:31:10 -0400
David Froble via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:

> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
> > I know how you feel.  This past week I put about 5 bookshelf feet of
> > Windows Manuals in the recycle bin.  Somehow, I don't think NT, 2000,
> > 98 or even XP are coming back.
> > 
> > And today Iearned Server 2003 is EOS in July.  Not surprising as I have
> > already noticed some of the stuff they are doing to force the issue.
> > I guess they learned their lesson with XP.  If you don;t force people
> > off it, they will stay.
> 
> I've been heard to mutter "just because it's old doesn't mean it won't 
> continue to do what it's always done".
> 
> Software doesn't wear out.

Very true. But for production it does wear out sometimes, especially with
respect to security because exploits for most of the vulnerabilities had
time to develop. It's a race against the clock as soon as something comes
out. But that doesn't stop us from running old software as a hobbyist system
as long as it's not on an internet facing host.

> HW does, and when old software cannot use new HW, that can be an issue.
> 
> I guess that's why I see some value in emulators and VM stuff, even if I 
> haven't done anything with any of that yet.
> 
> The boss has been talking to David Turner lately.  I created a monster. 
>   Now he's asking me if we wouldn't want to consider Alpha emulators 
> instead of itanics.  I of course don't have a clue.

Hoffman said, and I strongly agree, you're just trading an aging hardware
stack for an even more brittle software stack and that it isn't a long term
solution. (Any errors in quotation mine, and not intentional.)

Really, emulation is not a substitute for real hardware in production.
Emulators can be excellent development platforms but at the end of the day
software has to run on real, buggy hardware for a long time to know if it
works. To my knowledge nobody has enough clinical data on emulators to run
them safely in production whether they perform better than real hardware or
not.

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