[Info-vax] OpenVMS V9.0-C Released July 29th

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-08-03 18:16:07 +0000, Terry Kennedy said:

> On Monday, August 3, 2020 at 1:01:55 PM UTC-4, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> On 2020-08-03 15:25:02 +0000, clair.grant at vmssoftware.com said:
>> 
>>> I tried my best to ditch DECnet on x86 but there are just too many 
>>> customers using it (we asked, it was very disappointing).
>> 
>> From hard lessons years ago, polls accrue incremental info at best and 
>> most of which the product admin should already know or be able to 
>> extrapolate. Polls seldom garner info on where the product should be 
>> headed. If ever.
> 
> As the post you quoted from Clair said, VSI asked their current paying 
> customers and Phase IV was in demand.

I am aware of that. Well aware of that.  And I've done more than a few 
similar surveys. Many of them. And I've gotten good though usually 
shorter-term responses from the respondents, too. Reports of 
performance growth and of respondent app plans, of the blocking items 
and peeves, and reports and requests for incremental enhancements. And 
requests for fixes. Sometimes for system workarounds for app-level 
design flaws or app design bugs, too. These are the sorts of responses 
and feedback messages that could largely be predicted without even 
taking the poll, if the product admin is paying attention and/or has 
vendor folks embedded at the customer sites and/or customers in the 
vendor's labs, and/or if there's (opt-in) system telemetry around to 
collect app and system data.

What I have ~never gotten from a poll is a wholly new approach, or an 
overhaul or replacement approach. I've gotten ideas for and suggestions 
for more of what the customer is already using. Already doing. Very few 
customers will give the vendor the vendor's next big feature or update, 
or the steps toward a longer-term product or revenue strategy for the 
vendor. Strategies such as maybe such as becoming one of the most 
secure operating systems on the planet, or one of the most competitive 
disaster-tolerant configurations, in the case of VSI.

In more succinct phrasing, this is the difference between leading 
customers, and following customers.  Past the short-term fixes and 
updates, VSI are the experts at OpenVMS and where it's headed and how 
to get there, and in guiding the customer app maintenance and app 
development efforts.  The sorts of features and updates that make a 
substantial number of the customers really want to pay for and to load 
and to deploy an OpenVMS or layered product upgrade, and to adopt a new 
interface or tool.  As an example of a gotta-have-it feature, there are 
those here with enough, um, experience to remember the draw of having 
access to VAX/VMS V4.0 and its command-line editing, for instance.

Run a poll and ask around here, and you'll absolutely get DECnet and 
telnet and FTP requests. Lots of them. That doesn't mean that servicing 
those requests is a good long-term idea, either for the end-users or 
for the vendor. Which then becomes a question of migrating from and 
retiring those and other messes. Or of kicking the proverbial can down 
the road, as happens in a number of contexts.



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