[Info-vax] VAX VMS going forward

[David Goodwin]

On Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 1:15:06 PM UTC+12, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 7/27/2020 5:45 PM, David Goodwin wrote:
> > On Monday, July 27, 2020 at 11:47:12 PM UTC+12, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> >> Den 2020-07-27 kl. 13:28, skrev:
> >>> In article Dave Froble  writes:
> >>>> On 7/24/2020 6:09 PM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> >>>>> In article Dave Froble writes:
> >>>>>> On 7/24/2020 2:51 PM, John Reagan wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> P.S. I'm posting this via the new Google Groups site.  Still has some rough edges.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I will once again confess to curiosity.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> When a decent newsreader does a decent job, and "real" news sites are
> >>>>>> available, would you or anyone use Google?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> What am I missing?  Why do people use the "lesser" Google groups?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Why would anyone read a VMS newsgroup on anything but VMS?  :-)
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Not everybody uses VMS as a workstation.
> >>
> >> If you round that amount slightly, I guess it is closer to "no one".
> >>
> >>>>
> >>>> I got no problem using WEENDOZE as a user interface.
> >>>
> >>> I do!
> >>>
> >>
> >> Then use MAC or Linux. Or raise the founds for VSI to
> >> support the workstation/desktop parts of VMS...
> >
> > I wonder if VSIs license from HP allows them to release code under an open source license. The workstation/desktop bits are at this point I imagine fairly worthless and probably nothing more than a maintenance burden if its maintained at all.
> >
> > Motif and CDE were already open-sourced several years back under the LGPL. So if VSI could release the VMS-specific bits under a compatible license perhaps the VMS workstation/desktop bits could be maintained outside of VSI by those that use it.
> >
> 
> I wonder if you're approaching this from the wrong angle?
> 
> Isn't what you're talking about is a port of Motif, CDE, and whatever to 
> VMS?  Would you really need some of the internal VMS code to do this?

VMS already runs CDE and Motif - its what the "New Desktop" on OpenVMS Alpha is. Really I'm talking about long-term maintenance of the existing OpenVMS desktop environment. 

Problem is CDE these days is under the LGPL. We've been told VSI doesn't have the rights to re-license any of the code they've received from HPE. This means they can't update to any recent release of CDE. So I guess that means that the existing desktop environment stays largely as is with no further updates.

> Might be a bit harder to get some proprietary code released as open 
> source than to get VMS to support whatever is necessary for such a port.
> 
> I don't do such, so my suggestion may not have merit ....

I don't know enough here to really have any idea what would be involved in porting it a second time. Probably it would be more effort than its really worth.