[Info-vax] Beyond Open Source

[Neil Rieck]

On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 12:11:30 PM UTC-4, John Reagan wrote:
> On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 10:59:12 AM UTC-4, Neil Rieck wrote:
> 
> > p.s. Some years back, HP jettisoned OpenVMS talent that HP did not value. Then the responsibility of maintaining OpenVMS has shifted to VSI who has hired back some of that talent. This reminds me of the problems DEC went though in 1988 when a small group of DEC employees who were not valued by DEC found themselves working for a then, small company by the name of Microsoft.
> 
> So we should rename the operating system to "OpenVMS NT"?

I don't think we need to do that. But after reading a dozen posts which appeared over the weekend I feel it necessary to add a few more points.

While I think there is a place in the world for Open-Source software, and believe it will have greater influence every year, I also believe "big enterprise" (here, I am not talking about the cloud providers even thought the CIA is currently a customer on AWS) is not willing to bet-the-farm just yet.
 
I heard (third hand) about problems using Linux on multi-CPU x86-64 where one cpu will occasionally "get locked into a tight loop" and no one knows how to fix it. The customer who continually experiences the problem contacted "the curator" only to be told that the problem might have something to do with the quality of the code generated by the gcc compiler. Huh?
 
Consider the amount of testing just done by VSI to qualify OpenVMS on Poulson. I am certain that VSI would be able provide better field assistance to OpenVMS on Poulson than the Linux problem just described in the previous paragraph.

But let's assume that someone was able to fix the Linux problem by modifying gcc. With so many people working on the code it is probably harder to get the fix into production -AND- ensure that some know-it-all doesn't rebreak the product.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.