[Info-vax] Should VSI create a modern day VMS applications book ?

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Chris via Info-
> vax
> Sent: August 23, 2018 5:55 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy at gfsys.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Should VSI create a modern day VMS applications
> book ?
> 
> On 08/23/18 19:12, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > On 8/23/2018 1:29 PM, Chris wrote:
> >> On 08/23/18 12:24, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> >>> VMS believed that the users didn't want a GUI but were happy with a
> >>> clunky CLI.
> >>
> >> To be fair, dec were part of the gui revolution from the start, as
> >> part of the team that sponsered the early X windows development. They
> >> had a gui on VMS from quite early on, but their kit was just too
> >> expensive, partly at least because of the gold plated engineering
> >> design. Nothing wrong with that, but not competitive in the age of
> >> single board workstation systems. Expensive backplanes, separate card
> >> for every function and built like a tank mechanical construction.
> >
> > VWS and early DECWindows may have been relative competitive at least
> > functionality wise (you may be right that they were too expensive).
> >
> > But that is about 30 years ago.
> >
> > VMS GUI was not competitive functionality wise in the 90's.
> >
> > Arne
> >
> 
> The early nineties was nearly thirty years ago and at the time, I ran a
> Vaxstation II Gpx beside a Sun Sparcstation 1, which ran rings round the Vax
> performance wise, availability of both commercial and open source software
> and size. Dec should have put far more effort into their mips offerings at the
> time, which always seemed half hearted, but there again, unix was still snake
> oil in some quarters. As for the gui, that was more or less common
> throughout the industry.
> 
> Anyway. looks like yet another thread to exhume and examine the entrails :-
> )...
> 
> Chris
> 

As the old saying goes - hind sight is 20-20, but we should remember that OpenVMS went from:

1 - premier product offering from DEC to ..
2 - secondary offering from DEC (affinity model in DEC emphasized moving OpenVMS Customers to Windows) to ..
3 - minor product in offering from Compaq (HW company who only wanted OpenVMS to sell HW SKU's) to ..
4 - minor, minor, minor product offering from HP (company who had acquired something like 42 smaller companies and each had multiple products  when I left in 2012) to ..
5 - premier product offering from VSI

Full circle .. the fact that OpenVMS survived all the crud and mismanagement between 2-4 is a pretty good statement of the Customer base loyalty, and the quality of Engineering involved during all these crazy timeframes from the past.

So now .. VSI has to catch up, so expect 2018-2010 will be transition years.

As far as GUI goes, more and more Mgmt. GUI's are HTML5 web based, so I expect that is the way forward for OpenVMS (at least in the few years).


Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com