[Info-vax] Final Oracle release on VMS.

[John Dallman]

In article <rneg0u$4kq$2 at dont-email.me>,
clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP (Simon Clubley) wrote:

> In that case, it's even _more_ important for VSI to show that Rdb
> will be ported to x86-64 VMS and to let _all_ customers, not only
> the Rdb customers know that.

The hard part of that is getting Oracle to (a) do it and (b) announce a
commitment. After HP's lawsuit against them, they're going to be very
cautious about announcing commitments to something HP-connected,
especially since it's not core business for them. 

They have good reason for this IMHO: the grounds on which the court held
that they'd committed to supporting HP-UX Itanium indefinitely seemed to
me to be stretching an informal commitment too far. My employers, who
provide back-end software components, which I port to new platforms, have
been very careful about making commitments since that case.

The things Oracle will see here are that the matter is Itanium-related
and HP-related, both of which they have bad experiences with. They aren't
interested in VMS as such, and won't see much advantage for themselves in
supporting Rdb on x86-64 VMS. "Why not use OracleDB on Linux?" will be
the obvious question from their point of view. 

The most certain way to get Rdb on x86-64 VMS would be for VSI to make a
deal with Oracle like the one they have with HP for VMS: take over the
servicing and support, with the permission to port it to new platforms. 

John