[Info-vax] relaunch or legacy

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2022-01-28 11:00:25 +0000, Gérard Calliet said:

> Le 27/01/2022 à 22:20, John Dallman a écrit :
>> If you could express yourselves much more concisely, you might get 
>> better results.
> You are absolutely right. This has always been my problem.

Prolix is, and it detracts.

The following two points seem the crux:

> 3) x86 is necessary, but making it the top priority has been a mistake

There are always trade-offs.

Folks still on HPE versions aren't buying, or aren't buying yet.

They aren't buying support, and aren't buying upgrades and that for 
whatever local reasons, and are interested in per-call and fix-my-app 
fixes at most.

Not buying means no revenues.

More than a few sites do need dedicated staff for updates and overhauls 
and app refactoring for their existing production, but that maintenance 
and upkeep costs money and time and focus.

VSI seemingly has no rights to patch older HPE versions.

Which for those sites means providing workarounds for app problems on 
those other and older versions at best, maybe some add-on back-porting 
performance-permitting, and making suggestions for upgrades.

Which is what you (Gérard) and others are already doing.

VSI seemingly already lacks a staff large enough for the existing 
x86-64 port; for what work they already have on their roadmap.

Diluting VSI focus (further) to provide development outsourcing and app 
services for older versions—and whatever else you're suggesting in that 
wall of text you've posted—risks delaying the x86-64 port.

Which will detract from the revenues VSI sees available from those 
sites wanting or needing to keep current hardware and software.

> 4) VSI is creating a desert around it: no marketing, no community 
> encouragement, discouragement of intermediaries; the ecosystem is 
> heading for implosion

So what are your plans for the production environments and apps and 
sites you're working with, should that implosion arise?

Nobody but you and yours are going to respond and adapt to your needs, 
after all.

Whether that site-specific response might be continued delays and 
deferrals and denials, or updating to VSI versions, or incrementally 
porting apps off of OpenVMS, maybe making the case for you and yours to 
be acquired by VSI, or otherwise?

> Thanks for the attention

VSI has what they think is a path to sustained revenue with their 
available staff and budget, and bespoke and app-specific services for 
long-retired OpenVMS and VAX/VMS production environments doesn't seem 
to be a big part of that. (yet?)

Where VSI is with the staff and the budget they have—which is a 
~twentieth of what I would want—they're mostly making what seem the 
appropriate trade-offs for themselves, including SaaS licensing and the 
rest. Whether their OpenVMS customers (us) agree?




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