[Info-vax] Updated HPE/VSI OpenVMS V8.4-2L1 Marketing Brochures

[IanD]

On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 8:41:42 PM UTC+10, clairg... at gmail.com wrote:

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> 
> We announced at Boot Camp this week that we will doing an 8.4-2L1 release for Alpha. We will get more information out as soon as we have completed the detailed planning.
> 

That's amazing and quite a feat actually!

I was also meaning having a service where people can call / engage and get an assessment of what is needed to move people forward and get some help in doing so. The brilliant minds at VSI would be able to give people insights into how they can move their platforms forward (a lot would have no idea of even where to start)

I would say a lot of places out there are running in linux / windows shops with a side system of OpenVMS and the people looking after VMS have little or not enough experience to drag the platform forward

That would take a rather large engagement on behalf of VSI of course and it's probably better to focus on getting that x86 port done and the come back to helping people move beyond Alpha? You cannot do everything and your already dealing with years of little movement of movement in VMS

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> > 
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> The VSI/HPE agreement does not allow us to make VMS open source.

Yes, I believe it has been mentioned before but what happens when you enhance code? 
The enhanced code must belong to VSI ? or is it any derived work based off the bade code still under HPE ownership? (I'm not expecting an actual answer as I imagine this would be commercial in confidence but it would be interesting to know)

If HPE would allow the base code to be rewritten and thereby ownership transferred, this would open things a lot and the open source aspect could be further levered

I'm not just saying 'open source' because I think it's the best thing. I advocate open source mainly because it's the current model that is attracting all the new minds to the point where most people coming out of uni now will refuse to touch anything that is not open source - such has been the brainwashing of the young! Microsoft has all but caved in to this as well and have done an about face

I advocate open source because I happen to think it's another way to remove the stumbling blocks that OpenVMS is already facing and it doesn't need more stumbling blocks, it needs to make itself as attractive as possible

I understand that VSI have probably negotiated the best deal they could with HPE at the time, my probing and being the antagonist is not meant to be negative about the whole thing but more to put my hat into the ring as to where/what I think would help OpenVMS going forward. I know people in academic circles and linux is still king because of open source and the education sector is driving the minds of the future coders. I just want to find a way to attract them to OpenVMS if at all possible

I appreciate you telling us the details too as long as you know I'm not actually grumbling at yourself or VSI at large, for that matter. I'm just trying to find a way to put OpenVMS's best foot forward in a world that has all but ignored it for far too long