[Info-vax] vax vms licenses

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2022-04-27 kl. 16:36, skrev Dave Froble:
> On 4/27/2022 3:09 AM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> Den 2022-04-27 kl. 01:14, skrev Dave Froble:
>>> On 4/26/2022 5:57 PM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>>>> Den 2022-04-26 kl. 20:11, skrev Dave Froble:
>>>>> On 4/26/2022 1:09 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>>>> On 2022-04-26, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> On 4/26/2022 8:09 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 2022-04-26, gah4 <gah4 at u.washington.edu> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 1:28:10 AM UTC-7, John Dallman wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> (snip)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> As an additional logistical point, open-sourcing VMS while 
>>>>>>>>>> building it
>>>>>>>>>> requires using out-of-production Itanium servers would be 
>>>>>>>>>> suicidal: it
>>>>>>>>>> has to be sustainable on commodity hardware first.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> DEC nicely released the 36 bit OS for us to use, though with only
>>>>>>>>> (from them) out of production hardware.   I am not so sure when
>>>>>>>>> emulators came out, but it would not have been hard to write one
>>>>>>>>> by then.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I suspect VAX is nicer to write an emulator for than Alpha or 
>>>>>>>>> Itanium,
>>>>>>>>> but all are possible to keep VMS running on new hardware.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> There are full system emulators for all architectures I am aware of
>>>>>>>> apart from Itanium, which should tell you something. I once spent a
>>>>>>>> weekend looking at the possibility of writing one, and came to the
>>>>>>>> conclusion of basically "forget that!".
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Even with the initial help from Ski for the instruction set component,
>>>>>>>> writing an Itanium emulator would be a massive job and not all the
>>>>>>>> required bits and knowledge are freely available.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> For example, you can no longer freely download the Itanium firmware
>>>>>>>> that such an emulator would require.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Simon.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If emulators for building VMS is the issue, Alpha emulators already 
>>>>>>> exist.
>>>>>>> Don't need no stinkin itanic.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Read the original quote above. Itanium is currently used for things
>>>>>> that Alpha cannot be used for.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't see anything like that?
>>>>>
>>>>> What can itanic do that Alpha cannot?  It's a shared code base.
>>>>
>>>> You can lookup he SPD's or similar. There are a lot of tools
>>>> that are available on IA64 but not on Alpha.
>>>>
>>>
>>> You don't seem to be missing them ...
>>>
>>> :-)
>>>
>>
>> Why do you think that? And why do you think that our needs
>> are the same as for everyone else?
> 
> You have mentioned multiple times that your customer has 3 DS20E systems.

Yes, we have. And *you* have no idea, what so ever, why. You said that
we would not have any use of the things that are IA64-only, and
you have absolutely no knowledge about that.

The reason is of course that we have some things that are Alpha-only.

> 
> Of course, you may also have access to an itanic ...
> 

I had once for s short while. In my office. And I only installed
VMS on it, nothing more.