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

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2021-08-09 kl. 13:06, skrev Lawrence D’Oliveiro:
> On Monday, August 9, 2021 at 4:27:34 PM UTC+12, John Dallman wrote:
> 
>> [Windows NT] 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.
> 
> All of which were supported on Linux, and continued to be supported on Linux long after Microsoft had abandoned them. So you see, it wasn’t just a matter of the popularity (or not) of those architectures.

I read Johns comment such as "they weren't much used [*by Windows users*].

And also "the [*Windows*] market preferred x86-64..."

Not the possible popularity of the platforms as such...


> 
> Alpha is an interesting case. In spite of it being a 64-bit architecture, Windows NT only ever ran on it in 32-bit “TASO” mode. OpenVMS got as far as a hybrid 32/64-bit port, but I don’t think it ever managed to go full 64-bit.
> 
> The only two fully-64-bit OSes to run on Alpha were DEC’s Tru64 Unix ... and Linux.
>