[Info-vax] VSI strategy for OpenVMS

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 9/12/2021 7:18 AM, John Dallman wrote:
> The current "open source on OpenVMS" caused me to wonder how VSI's
> strategic plan for OpenVMS and its applications works. Some bits are
> fairly easy to deduce, but others are far less clear.
> 
> The OpenVMS customer base has been slowly shrinking for quite a while.
> Since VSI lives on support contract income, this is a serious problem.
> Reasons for organisations to carry on using the OS include:

> But the reasons for carrying on using OpenVMS don't obviously indicate a
> particular field or market segment of computing where OpenVMS usage is
> concentrated. It seems likely that the existing customers are a somewhat
> random selection of the organisations that took up VMS in the 1970s
> through 1990s. That creates a problem.
> 
> DEC was a large organisation, capable of having expert teams in most
> fields of computing. VSI probably can't manage that. Their efforts to
> grow the customer base will presumably have to be focused on one or two
> areas. There seems to be a potential problem after customers start
> transitioning to x86: demand for software for many different fields, from
> a wide variety of customers.
> 
> Porting open source is one answer, but there's an awful lot of it out
> there, making for a huge task, and doing it is at least as complicated as
> porting Linux software to Windows. That suggests that a Linux
> compatibility layer/library might be a good idea, but there have been
> several past attempts at that, and none seem to have got established.
> 
> It's not obvious to me what VSI should concentrate on once OpenVMS is
> working on x86 and customer transitions have become routine. It is clear
> that should be some kind(s) of server work, but not which ones.
> 
> Opinions?

I don't think VSI has said much about their plans beyond x86-64 port.

And it will also take a few years to get it out, get customers
migrated and stabilize it and fill the most obvious gaps.

But to me the focus should be obvious: operating systems are
sold by applications - VMS needs more applications, so work
should focus on getting more applications developed for and
ported to VMS.

Thinking loud that must include:
- extend available compilers
- create a model for distribution of native open source libraries (PCSI
   is not the way top go for dozens or hundreds of libraries) - use
   VCPKG as inspiration
- work with open source projects to include VMS as supported platform
   in main repo
- work with commercial products to add support for VMS
- create VMS calling standard V2 with OO support and
   add support for it to at least C++, Pascal and Basic

Arne