[Info-vax] BASIC compiler in the hobbyist distribution

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-05-29 13:31:21 +0000, lists at openmailbox.org said:

> ... deletia...

Looking out ten or fifteen years...

...picking the OpenVMS porting target of either x86-64 or some other 
architecture, POWER is the much bigger gamble, and with far fewer 
hardware options available.  VSI has already stated x86-64 is the 
target, and that there are future considerations around ARM.

...There are certainly good technical reasons why folks might or will 
prefer POWER or some other architecture over x86-64 — but in the end, 
anybody providing an operating system product still has to make the 
financial case work.  Very few vendors have the cash to compete head-on 
with Intel and survive.  (Which is why ARM and AArch64 is interesting 
to me and to at least some other folks; their designs have large 
volumes, and they're (still) not competing head-on with Intel.  But I 
digress.)  From all the data that I can see, the trends for POWER are 
headed in the wrong direction.

...ARM with AArch64 isn't quite there yet as a viable volume hardware 
target — not the least until the performance increases a little more — 
Intel x86-64 is pretty speedy — and until there's better consistency 
via SBSA or some follow-on that gets more widely adopted and 
established.  Linux is pushing for something like SBSA or a 
dependably-available generic core interface pretty hard, as would any 
other software platform looking to support more systems with less 
system-specific code.  But I digress.

...looking for customer ports from AIX or another Unix to OpenVMS is 
not going to have enough of a sales volume to matter.  Not up front, 
and not without a whole lot of open source on OpenVMS.   AIX is much 
more likely to port elsewhere — I won't confuse the discussion with any 
further references to more likely but-unlikely porting targets — if an 
AIX customer does decide to port.  Again, this was the core of my 
comments intended for seasoned_geek.

...Any growth that VSI will obtain will be largely be intrinsic sources 
, with fewer new customers arriving on OpenVMS by porting from another 
box.   Eventually, VSI would like to see major vendors porting large 
applications to (or back to) OpenVMS.  That's a much longer-term 
investment, and a much longer-term project.  Once OpenVMS is on x86-64 
and the team gets rolling on enhancements, then maybe five years before 
enough of the vendors might get interested.

...As much as technical arguments are interesting, it's the financials 
and the financial trends that matter to commercial providers.  If the 
finances don't work out, the technical arguments are irrelevant.   The 
projects and products and services are disbanded.



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