[Info-vax] OpenSSL CSWS-2.2-1

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-03-15 19:45:54 +0000, Dave Froble said:

> You present a case that doesn't exist.  VMS works for us.
> 
> Really, what might be a possible replacement?  Don't forget that 40 
> years of business logic.  That is a critical part.  Other vendors have 
> tried to compete.  None came close.
> 
> Some might blithely say "port elsewhere".  None seem to consider the 
> cost, both monetarily, and in mistakes that are sure to occur.
> 
> We on the other hand must consider such.  We have done so.  We don't 
> want to think of doing such a potentially disastrous and costly thing, 
> to end up with at best, what already exists.  At best, most likely less.
> 
> Now, if you wish to actually consider the ramifications of what you 
> propose, before doing the proposing, that might be wise.

As you quite correctly state, re-hosting and wholesale rewriting can be 
(and variously will be) difficult for an incumbent provider with an 
installed base.  Incremental migration or incremental refactoring 
(usually) being the most viable path.

Remember too to ponder whether a new competitor might be able to sell 
at a lower price, with a different approach, with different tooling, or 
a different platform.  If a business isn't looking to undercut itself 
and its own products and to attract new, somebody else can be.  If 
(when?) a "cheaper, and good enough" competitor appears, it can well be 
too late for an incumbent.

As for OpenVMS and SSL and this particular comp.os.vms newsgroup 
thread, Apache and a whole chain of other packages including SSL and 
certificates and a password store should all have been fully integrated 
into the base distro a decade ago.  Trade-offs and assumptions and 
expectations can and do change.  What worked for a single-core VAX with 
456 MB disks and 8 MB of RAM can be an entirely wrong trade-off when 
desktops and low-end servers routinely operate with 16 or more cores, 
64 GB of RAM, and a few dozen terabytes of SSD.  And worse, as fast, 
byte-addressable, persistent memory continues to arrive.  And app 
development tools on OpenVMS are weak, in the most charitable of terms. 
 Why do I mention this?  Because this makes app development on OpenVMS 
more tedious, more difficult, and variously more expensive.

There are always trade-offs with products and product updates and 
pricing.  Some management decisions will pay off.  Some won't.




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