[Info-vax] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.vms/v07C_K7KzCg%5B1-25%5D

[gérard Calliet]

Le 19/08/2020 à 02:01, Stephen Hoffman a écrit :
> Less loquaciously
Less loquaciously, it's just about why Digital became the first or 
second world computer company: because a strong idea met real needs.

I don't care about the thousands of details you can provide to be the 
one who doesn't hear because he doesn't want to. You were five years ago 
in the herd who was "thinking" there will not be a future for VMS. You 
were wrong I was right. And perhaps what I'm thinking about now, and 
about you don't care, is just what about in five years the herd will 
aknowledge as right.

You make me laught with your contradictions. The same Stephen says there 
will be ten years to achieve the transition to x86, and the same Stephen 
repeats the common chorus "x86 is THE priority". During this ten years, 
the poor fools like the customers I'm (really) fighting for, who will 
remain on Alpha and "itanic" thank you for your peremptories.

The second idea, after why Digital became Digital, is why VMS didn't 
die. I think you cannot say anything about that, because you were 
thinking five years ago, examining your crystal ball, VMS will die. On 
my side I think VMS didn't die for the same reason Digital became great.
The idea which meet the needs. And VMS was upon to die because the 
reason that made Digital great were a lot less fashionable in our times.

We can again examine a chrystal ball, to take the good choices for the 
VMS future. Or we can THINK about the fondamental reasons. The needs 
that make VMS survive are to be addressed, and what you said about the 
ten years with Alpha and Itanium neighbours is part of that.

Even if it is sad to admit, VMS addresses a very little segment of 
market. The major market is addressed by billion dollars companies, and 
I don't know how many dollars has been invested for VMS, but it doesn't 
go to billions. We are very small players, and our chance is only to 
address accurately our market that the big players are not interested in.

Our market includes the needs for continuity (the poor fools still on 
Alpha and "Itanic"), the necessities of locality (you know, for example, 
the nuclear plants, which cannot be maintained via DevOps bright 
solutions), the philosophy of sobriety, reusability, minimal use of 
black boxes (thinking structuration, quality and mastery, not quantity 
and probability).

Because the major trends is somehow the opposite : delocalisation, 
hyper-abstraction, probalistic extraction of meaning, and because the 
huge and immediate profits are with these major trends, VMS cannot be 
selled the way the majors sell their jam. Sell different, think 
different. And, sadly, we'll not become for the ten next years as rich 
as Mr Bill Gate, too bad.

Fifteen years ago, the ecology was seen as dream for weed smokers. Now 
the billionairs think investing on the Green Development. My woodstock 
cousins have a good laugh.

The ten years after the ten years, if I'm still there, I'll use a cane, 
and I suppose I'll have retired. But I'm sure the computer solutions 
which rest on sobriety, locality, mastery will have got a good market 
segment (not at all the majority), because the companies or users who 
will have use them will be proud to have escape a lot of dangers, 
compared to the bright and healthy solutions. It is already the case for 
important companies I know.

So:
- x86 is a priority, yes; making the life of the poor fools on Alpha and 
itanic is also a priority (CONTINUITY)
- VMS is not a washing machine; don't sell it the same way Mr Bill Gates 
sells its "solutions",
- VMS is an ecosystem, use the community resiliency as a strength (and 
guys, please, awake, be proud, and engage !)
- market about VMS on its essential qualities, let the new trends about 
sober, green, sustainable development meet these essential and already 
here qualities of VMS,
- let the young people go into this big adventure by a lot of 
initiatives (community license, community management, free training, 
standard open source development,...).

Sorry, Stephen, I have been loquacious. The difficulty with the ideas is 
we have no more means to expose them than just speaking, a word after 
another. Compared to billions unnecessary agile transactions by second 
we are just primitive apes.

Gérard Calliet