[Info-vax] Vax Station 4000 VLC

[David Wade]

On 25/12/2018 19:25, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 12/25/2018 9:16 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 12/25/18 8:41 AM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>>> Yes, but I long for the old desktop-to-datacenter days.
>>
>> You mean like Windows and Linux both have.
> 
> Microsoft and Apple make money on desktop products.
> 
> But nobody else does.
> 
> Linux desktop survives due to volunteers. Linux server
> make money but not desktop.
> 
> It requires thousands of developers top maintain
> a competitive desktop environment.
> 

I am not not sure that you need thousands of developers. I note from

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/2017/10/2017-linux-kernel-report-highlights-developers-roles-accelerating-pace-change/

that there were 4,300 who contributed, from 500 companies, but most 
commonly these were device driver commits....

> MS can afford to pay thousands of developers
> for desktop products as they make billions selling
> desktop products.
> 

Again I am not sure how many core windows developers there are. I would 
be very surprised if there were more than a few hundred. I suspect that 
there are more in hardware producing device drivers.

> Linux doesn't sell desktop products, but can rely
> on volunteers to keep things working.
> 

I don't think there are many working for free. Pretty sure the server 
code is just re-used in the desktop...

> There is no way that VSI will sell enough VMS desktop products
> to afford a major investment in such.
> 
> And there is no way that there will be enough volunteers
> to develop this stuff for free.
> 

I suspect this is true.

> Arne

Dave