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

[IanD]

Thanks for the congratulations

I hope I haven't been too negative 😎. 

Maybe it's because I have worked in IT outsourcing for the past 22+ years and see the acceleration of how fast older systems, such as VMS based ones are being retired. I see literally 100 systems transformed every week to a cloud / visualised platform and a number of those are also being earmarked for straight out porting to Linux

I've also been stuck on 7.3-2 and alpha with no means of escape either, much like the prisoner who's resigned to his fate that the bars are stronger then themselves

I was also sort of hoping that vsi might have found a way to easily bring all those alpha systems out there across to the newer and better world but that was a naive fantasy on my behalf

I'm not pretending my new world is going to magically create utopia. They are upgrading to get the speed advantage of the i4's, not because the platform is going to enable them to take them where they want to be in the next 5 years. Going to the latest version just makes sense but it not because the OS has anything magical to offer apart from accessing faster hardware

I'm still 'negative' (although I think it's more realistic) as to what's facing VMS in the near future. X86 is one thing, security another, but right behind that is development and I don't mean faster builds, I'm meaning getting those universities and young minds interested in developing on OpenVMS, because it's not going to grow much without the next base of minds to drag it forward. I have friends in achedemic circles and it's no longer about tinkering with code, it's about having the tools to build newer and better items and for that ideal you need a platform that easily and readily can pull open source code and run with it easily. University projects are not much about develop this tool or that tool anymore, that stopped years ago, there's enough tools to do just about any job now. It's all about bundling items to enable higher order functionality and develop frameworks and platforms that the education sector is teaching the next round of people to perform. 
OpenVMS has got a fair way to go to be able to work in that space.

OpenVMS is still closed in its core, I think it's going to be a hard slog trying to get the next round of young minds interested in the platform. Maybe if VSI pitched it as Please help us transform VMS to an open source offering then you may attract people on a philosophical reasoning but to transform OpenVMS to open source itself or at least to a point where open sourcing sees OpenVMS as a desirable target for the greater world of developers beyond OpenVMS zealots, is years in the making. 

Why would they come anyhow? They already have Linux. What can we do to motivate people to come over to OpenVMS?

So yes, I'm excited about escaping the dead end system I was looking after although it had lots of potential still and I did find it hard to just give up and walk away but I'm also realistic that the new system where I've gone might not be around for ever and a day anyhow, there are some aspects to it that are really limiting it's growth that will be extremely costly to correct

At least in getting itanium experience and 8.4 exposure, which I'm extremely excited about 🙆