[Info-vax] Beyond Open Source

[Robert A. Brooks]

On 5/10/2015 8:20 AM, seasoned_geek wrote:
> On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 8:18:13 PM UTC-5, clairg... at gmail.com wrote:

>> COMPAQ stopped development of Alpha. Three senior engineers, long-time
>> DEC/COMPAQ people, had been working with Intel and concluded that the best
>> path forward was to move to Itanium. There was an extremely long and loud
>> debate as to whether it was worth the effort to port VMS, whereas there was
>> no debate about Tru64. Further development of VMS could have easily ended
>> that day early in 2001. But, we were told to start planning the work. A few
>> months later it was announced that HP was acquiring COMPAQ which was
>> finalized in the spring of 2002. By that time we were nearly a year into
>> the VMS port to Itanium.
>
> COMPAQ stopped it _after_ they had already gotten into bed with HP. Killing
> their youngest child was the "proof of commitment" HP needed. The official
> announcement of COMPAQ didn't come until some time later. Make no mistake, it
> was HP which killed off Alpha so their bastard child could have a home.

Your credibility drops to near-zero if you disagree with what Clair says.

I agree that the timing of the June 2001 announcement looks suspicious given the
Sept(?) 2001 announcement of the HP/Compaq merger.

But if Clair states that it's mere correlation, but not causation, then it's the 
truth.

-- 
                  -- Rob