[Info-vax] How to Avoid Old Software, Old Bugs?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-11-13 20:11:47 +0000, Dave Froble said:

> On 11/13/2019 12:49 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> Stephen Hoffman  <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>>> 
>>> ...the usual and effectively-futile requests for re-debugging old and 
>>> long fixed bugs rather than staying current,
>> 
>> There are many popular systems where one has a choice between old bugs 
>> that are fixed in newer releases, and new bugs that have been 
>> introduced in newer releases.
> 
> There is the issue.  There is a lot to be said in favor of "if it ain't 
> broke, don't fix it".

If we lived in the computing world where that was truly possible?

Alas, we do not.

Not if there are network interconnections. Delegation and distributed 
authentication. Distributed logging.  Remote management.  Etc.

> As a developer, I'm running the latest from VSI.  The worst, and the 
> best, that can happen is I run into something and I report it to VSI.

Which is the world we're all living with.  The world that we're all living in.

Hopefully VSI makes few mistakes with their updates and upgrades.

But then none of us can afford the cost of VSI making absolutely no 
mistakes, either.

> However, a production system usually cannot afford to have problems. 
> One might attempt testing, but the real test of any such system is 
> actually using it.  So, it can be a bad decision, either way.

The most predictable thing that'll happen to a single-server production 
system centered on uptime and that cannot have problems... will be 
problems.

> It's why someone was recently looking for a MiceoVAX 3100 Model 98. 
> They may have performed extensive testing and certification, and would 
> really rather not have to go through that procedure again if they can 
> avoid it.

Various of us here want brute-force uptime.

App designs based on brute-force uptime will almost inevitably fail, 
and the apps and the systems will almost inevitably fall behind current 
software.

Various of us have configurations we don't even want to reboot.  What 
does that state about the fragility of our designs and of our apps?

About what we need to work on, but haven't been able to for whatever reason?

What does that state about the ease of using and the pricing of 
rolling-upgrade support and of rolling-upgrade app designs in OpenVMS, 
for that matter?

Sites running decades-old software, or that are still running a 
MicroVAX, that are not staying current on hardware and software?

I'd like it if computers were isolated and unchanging and with no 
interconnections.  A few even are air-gapped.  Mostly. Probably. Maybe.

But for the rest of us?  That's just not the 
increasingly-interconnected world we and our apps are operating in.

We get dragged forward.  Off SSLv3.  Off telnet. Off DECnet. Off FTP.  Etc.

Sustaining these old-release environments is not a viable market for an 
operating system software vendor.

Not a sustaining market, and definitely not a growing market.







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