[Info-vax] inertia or fundamentals about langages?

[gérard Calliet]

Le 22/05/2019 à 01:17, Stephen Hoffman a écrit :
> On 2019-05-21 18:30:48 +0000, gérard Calliet said:
> 
>> ...you don't save your concept of inertia for VSI ; this concep is a 
>> lot more non efficient for the future of VSI ; I didn't say thinking 
>> the right way about fundamental errors about porting will be the 
>> unique business for VSI ; I just evaluate the meaning of the site we 
>> will not port outside and which are now a major part of the VSI 
>> business ; no the major part now of the VSI business is not made of 
>> lazy melancholics ; it is made of clever professional who know a lot 
>> about fundamentals in computer science ; and because they are clever 
>> lasting on VMS they'll prove intrinsic value of VMS ; and because of 
>> that VSI business will develop.
At last you answer my question, so I can have a discussion.
> 
> "The inertia of the installed base is the future of VSI, and for the 
> foreseeable future" is shorter.
> 
> Inertia has nothing to do with being clever.
> 
> Inertia has to do with staff and spending priorities; on spending on a 
> port, or on other work.
1) you report the un-cleverness to the context. Because if they had 
choice, they would not be in inertia. So, or there is not any context 
which is free to decide, or the context is in inertia.

2) my point is not to say there is not inertia, I agree with you, there 
is such thing, and as you describe it ; but I don't agree with you if 
you say that it is the *only* cause of lasting on VMS ; you can replace 
"cleverness" by "value", and my opinion is that we stay (sometimes) on 
VMS not only because of our inertia or of the inertia we undergo, but 
because VMS, by its specific values and by the specific story of 
building our solution on it has more value than other environments.

3) the (2) point is decisive to think about a future: it is only if 
there is more value on VMS that VMS could get future success ; and yes 
it's a commercial product, and its intrinsic value is not the only cause 
for a success ; but if we forget the root, which is the value, perhaps 
wwe'll not see in anytime the tree.
> 
> And folks that are still running V5.5-2H4—clever or not, locally 
> appropriate or not—are not part of the future of VSI OpenVMS.
Do you really think my only customer is this strange one, and that all I 
say is referred to it?
> 
> Not until they decide to spend on upgrades to newer OpenVMS versions, on 
> OpenVMS support, and eventually on porting their apps and environments 
> to OpenVMS x86-64.
> 
> Inertia also arises with clever folks that don't challenge themselves to 
> learn new-to-them tools and new-to-them platforms, but that's fodder for 
> another discussion or three.
> 
> 
So, for that argument, not cleverness, but lazzyness or cowardness. As 
you say, a little bit out :)