[Info-vax] relaunch or legacy

[Gérard Calliet]

Le 01/02/2022 à 18:23, Stephen Hoffman a écrit :
> 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.
I must say, it is difficult of understand because it is not enought 
prolix. You have facts, interpretations, reasons, motives.

Difficult to expose all. But necessary if you expect the ones you are 
criticizing have their reasons, and you try to understand and not to 
condamn. The french customers I know just condam. I was hoping thinking 
could do better.

It is always a pain trying to think and expose it if the reader takes 
only the facts, and is always totally confindent on his interpretations, 
reasons, motives.

Perhaps I have cultural difficulties regarding brainstorming, and the 
pure sense of thinktank is simpler than that I expect.
> 
> 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.
oh yeah?
> 
> 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.
They say. And if it is the case, no idea from VSI to renegociate it.
What about taking the fees for the transfered HPE support, and not 
thinking about being a little more cooperative?
> 
> 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.
We'll do lesser and lesser if everyones thinks VMS is dead. Ok, they are 
wrong, or perhaps not anyone can say if VMS will survive.

What I try to say is that VSI creates by his way of acting the certitude 
that VMS will dye.
It is a false belief, an effect of an unundurstandable strategy.
There is another false belief that says "they have their reasons, poor 
guys, they do just what they can, and we have to accept everything".
I try to explain why these two beliefs are false, and why they exist. A 
little bit complex.

But we can go on just on the facts. Pry. And lament if we dye.
> 
> 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 portI'm not sure they would be a lot of ressources to open the door at 
operations of collaboration with customers or consultants keeping alive 
the old things.

What you say I do could be a little bit helped (for example helping 
someone who had port python, not being his concurrent), with some fees 
to VSI to deliver expertise. The old guys would be gratefull and would 
think about going ahead. On the contrary not any help and just force the 
pace to the old guys. They condamn.
> 
> 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?
Doing for the Alpha and Itanium environments what I do for the VAX 
environments. But VMS will be as died as museum OSes.
> 
> Nobody but you and yours are going to respond and adapt to your needs, 
> after all.
THE theory, yours. The rawest thing than can be said about an IT 
ecosystem. Are you aware of how the IT ecosystems are successfull? 
Because they understand the complex dependencies between suppliers, 
users, experts, the dependencies between event and beliefs...
We depend on VSI and VSI depends on us. And as I think, normally, for 
sure the customers has a little bit to adapt to the supplier, but the 
rule is more that the supplier has to adapt to the needs of the customer.
I know, I know, Digital culture.
> 
> 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?
Good intuition. VSI acts as a corsair, and his logic seems to be: if we 
get all the market we'll survive. And yes, in 2 or 3 years VSI will be 
in the best place, associated with sector7, to port off VMS, and "buy" 
the independent consultants. A forecast I had in 2014. Yes, in that 
time, just a forecast. Today the realty.

I do prefer thinking another strategy could preserve the future of VMS, 
and mine. Motive. Better to be alive with VMS alive than to be dead and 
VMS dead. Absurd, is'nt it?
> 
>> 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?)
What do you think about a guy who will not sell to his customer what he 
needs today to prepare him to buy a product which does'nt yet exist. 
"You will not get the bread, I prepare for you the dessert!" Not my baker.
But perhaps, as you say, your baker has his reasons, we have just to 
file at the baker's door, like they did in the old good times in russia 
(russian are good believers).
> 
> 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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