[Info-vax] VSI licencing policy (again), was: Re: VSI has a new CEO

[Dave Froble]

On 8/9/2021 12:27 AM, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <c4f936d9-317d-4ce3-977f-8b492dc81407n at googlegroups.com>,
> lawrencedo99 at gmail.com (Lawrence D_Oliveiro) wrote:
>
>> Windows NT was supposedly designed from the beginning to be portable
>> across more than just x86, and look at what a failure that was.
>
> It was initially shipped on MIPS, PowerPC and Alpha, and the dropping of
> those platforms was because they weren't much used, rather than because
> they didn't work. It then shipped on Itanium, which was dropped because
> the market preferred x86-64, rather than because it didn't work. x86-64
> is now dominant in the market, but ARM64 is shipping and working.
>
> My employers have shipped Windows NT software on x86, Alpha, Itanium,
> x86-64 and ARM64. I did the Itanium, x86-64 and ARM64 ports. Other
> engineers did porting work for MIPS and PowerPC, but both of those
> platforms were abandoned before being shipped, because their prospective
> customers lost interest.
>
>> I suggested on one of VSI's YouTube videos that they rearchitect
>> VMS on top of a Linux kernel. That should simplify the job
>> immensely, since Linux already runs on essentially every major
>> processor architecture still in existence.
>
> That might have been a good idea several years ago, but given they have
> it working now, changing would be foolish. The unusual difficulties with
> porting VMS seem to have been the need to create BLISS and MACRO-32
> compilers, the out-of-date C compiler, and a much smaller team than DEC
> had for the Alpha port, or HP for the Itanium port.
>
> John
>

The Macro-32 and Bliss compilers would have been needed regardless, 
unless VSI was going to give up some customers.  Don't know how many, 
but, it could be significant.

I seem to recall that some of the real work was different memory 
management and a few other things.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
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