[Info-vax] What would you miss if DECnet got the chop? Was: "bad select 38" (OpenSSL on VMS)

[David Froble]

Michael Moroney wrote:

> In an ideal world you are correct.
> 
> VSI, however, is a small company. It has to follow the money.  VSI
> does this pretty well at this time.  I doubt there is much money
> in DECnet.
> 
> I could easily be wrong.  As I alluded to before, if a big customer
> waved money around and said "We want DECnet over IPv6!!" then my
> boss will walk into my office with a message "Guess what..."
> Will that ever happen?
> 
> (aside: Likely me. Nobody here came from the DECnet group or knows
> much about the internals. But I was the one who got the DECnet
> Plus build working so that makes me the "expert", I guess)

Some thoughts, I'm not a paying customer, and I think I have some feel for your 
limitations.

Is the DECnet code covered by the agreement with HP, specifically, it cannot be 
"open sourced"?  If not, you could make it available and say "here it is, do 
what you want".

:-)

If it cannot be open sourced, can a copy be provided to a third party to do 
independent development?  I'd guess the agreement might allow VSI to use 
contractors for some work?

Perhaps, if such still exists, some from the DECnet group might want to work on 
the product as volunteers, for freeware, for ????

What language(s) were used in DECnet?

You are correct in what you've written in the past, DECnet as a network 
transport is pretty much a dead product.  However, I tend to look at DECnet as a 
VMS utility in general, and specifically the proxy logins and FAL can be rather 
useful.  I have it on my development systems.  The others in Consolidated Data 
appear to be less enamored with DECnet, do not use it, and I believe it is not 
active on any customer system.  Alternatives are in use there.

I'm sure VSI has a much better feel for the demand for DECnet, and which parts 
are in demand, than anyone else, and will act accordingly.

A slightly different subject, I don't really understand any possible issues with 
the routing of DECnet V over IPv6?  Not that I know much about the subject, but 
I'd think that what version of IP is in use on a router might not matter to 
users of the router.  As I wrote, I don't know much about these things.  The 
only thing I can imagine is the length of the IP address.  Would this matter if 
only URLs were in use?  I'd also guess there might be less issues with using an 
IPSEC tunnel?

Perhaps someone knowlegible in this might provide some enlightenment ?