[Info-vax] VAX VMS going forward

[Dave Froble]

On 7/20/2020 6:50 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 7/20/20 6:11 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>>
>> On 7/17/20 5:26 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> On 7/17/20 1:35 PM, John Reagan wrote:
>>>> On Friday, July 17, 2020 at 12:41:58 PM UTC-4, Phillip Helbig
>>>> (undress to reply) wrote:
>>>>> In article <9513122f-5615-4d7c-b9aa-f97699920cfdo at googlegroups.com>,
>>>>> Alice Wyan <finitud at gmail.comwrites:
>>>>>
>>>>>> If I understand the situation correctly, HPE is completely dropping
>>>>>> support for VAX VMS, but the rights haven't been transferred to VSI.
>>>>>> This means starting next year VMS on the VAX is essentially
>>>>>> abandoned.
>>>>>
>>>>> Right.  I can understand VSI having little interest in it; it surely
>>>>> couldn't be justified financially.
>>>>>
>>>>>> If HPE is no longer going to be making money out of it, what would be
>>>>>> stopping them from selling it/give the rights away to, say, a
>>>>>> hobbyist
>>>>>> collective that could be set up to preserve this system?
>>>>>
>>>>> Nothing, except that they figure that it is not worth their time.
>>>>>
>>>>>> I guess there'd be quite a legal mess of rights behind the old code,
>>>>>> but...
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm sure that they have a lot of experience with that, and the
>>>>> situation
>>>>> wouldn't be that much different than Alpha or Itanium.
>>>>>
>>>>>> would it be a doable thing?
>>>>>
>>>>> Certainly.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I have said several times, to several people, in several forums: The
>>>> day you ask me to starting making VAX compilers again is the day
>>>> we'll start planning my retirement party.  I ain't got no time for
>>>> that stuff.  The thought of the VAX VCG and PL/1 (much of the VCG is
>>>> written in PL/1) is a hard NO.  I will use my safeword on that one.
>>>>
>>>
>>> What happened to the compilers that were used to build VAX
>>> versions in the past?  I would have thought there was one
>>> big archive with everything VAX related in it.  Were they
>>> really so incompetent that they lost some of it?  I would
>>> have expected that all it would really take for someone new
>>> to build a VAX version of VMS today would be to have the
>>> archive and a machine (today, probably an emulated system)
>>> to load it on and run the build process.
>>
>> No one said anything was lost.  The context was the prospect of having
>> VSI produce a VAX release, which would be necessary before they could
>> issue licenses (hobbyist or otherwise) for VAX, but which they have said
>> numerous times they aren't going to do. In that context, John is
>> obviously talking about *maintaining* the VCG compilers, which he would
>> have to do if VSI were producing VAX releases.  Or not maintaining them,
>> since he would quit first.
>
> VAX VMS isn't maintained now.  Hasn't been for, I don't klnow, a
> decade maybe.  No one is asking for it to be maintained. The
> assumption was (at least on my part) that the archive of the
> system used to create the last release of VAX VMS still existed.
> If that is the case all that should need to be done is to load
> it on a system (probably emulated and thus likely to be much faster
> than the system last used to build it) and run the build scripts.
> I always thought VMS engineering was professional enough (at least
> when it was still done by people like Hoff)  that the system was
> smooth and maybe even documented.
>
> If desired they could change the startup banner to reflect VSI
> taking over, but no change to any of the code would be necessary.
>
>>
>> Now, if some bored computer science students with nothing to do during
>> the pandemic would update llvm-alpha and produce an llvm-vax code
>> generator, everything would be gravy :-).  Except John would probably
>> still quit if he had to make the LLVM-based compilers with the GEM
>> emulation target VAX since the GEM-based compilers are likely full of
>> post-VAX assumptions.
>>
>
> If they weren't the compilers used in the past, why would you need
> them now for a "one-off" run?
>
> bill
>

I'd think that nothing new would be required.  So John might be safe.

However I do believe that both Clair and Steve have touched on this 
subject in the past.  Some of the things I recall:

The build was spread over multiple systems

The build was not 100% automated (big issue)

The build included things beyond compiling and linking

The build instructions might be lost

The issue then is, someone would have to find or implement a build, and 
that wasn't going to be simple, easy, or short.

None of which matters.  The VAX/VMS V7.3 distribution is all that's 
needed, from a software perspective, and I'm sure multiple people have 
it, I know  I have a CD with the distribution.

The issues are permissions and LMF.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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