[Info-vax] How to Avoid Old Software, Old Bugs? (was: Re: bizarre SEARCH bug (7.3-2 Alpha))

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <qqh8cq$fob$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
<seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes: 

> >> What is strange is that the second "]" is not highlighted.  The text 
> >> contains many examples of two of each in one line, and the others look  
> >> OK, whether or not there is text between the matching pairs or not.
> > 
> > Looking through the audit trail, I see a fix in SEARCH.B32 of a problem 
> > where  SEARCH fails to highlight some instances of a matching string. 
> > November 2005.
> > 
> > <cue Hoff and old software>

The drum roll is missing.  :-)

> Phillip has dreams of enterprise-ness,
> 
> and is making many of the Classic Enterprise Mistakes,
> 
> ....with hardware configurations ill-suited,
> 
> ....with little budget to even sustain current use,
> 
> ....badly-down-revision software and tools,
> 
> ....with unrecognized dependencies and failures when testing software upgrades,
> 
> ....the usual and effectively-futile requests for re-debugging old and 
> long fixed bugs rather than staying current,
> 
> ....with failing to test reboots such as arose with the console and the 
> issued-but-apparently-forgotten-REPLY/DISABLE and the lack of proper 
> OPC$* settings,
> 
> ....and with no formal support.
> 
> This is a microcosm of the app environments at various businesses, 
> unfortunately.

My excuse is that, in the context of almost all of my posts here, I am a 
hobbyist.  I would gladly pay a reasonable fee for support, but that 
doesn't seem to be available.  I don't think that the hardware is an 
issue; it is as fast as I need, and I have enough spares to last me 
until I die.

When VMS on x86 becomes available at reasonable hardware and software 
and licensing and support costs, perhaps that will change, but that 
depends on VSI more than on me.

> There's also the question of whether any future hobbyist program should 
> even permit the use of older OpenVMS releases, any preferences and 
> objections of the retro-computing folks to the contrary.

Why shouldn't it?

> Those retrocomputing folks here including Phillip and this ~18 year
> old bug. 

I'm not a retrocomputer.  I would gladly use more modern hardware and 
software, but they aren't available to a hobbyist at a reasonable price.
Also, this 18-year-old bug has not bothered me ONCE before I noticed it 
in the last 18 years, and even as it is now it is a) not a show-stopper 
and b) doesn't occur on the 8.4 system in the cluster.

7.3-2 Alpha is probably better, in many respects, than many much newer 
operating systems.