[Info-vax] relaunch or legacy

[Dave Froble]

On 2/2/2022 11:53 AM, Gérard Calliet wrote:

> It is about freezed application which have to live a long time. For example
> appications strongly certified (because of big danger, or garanties about human
> lives,...). The application, hardware, maintenance operations have to be the
> same for decades. There are companies who garantie that. It's named in france
> "Maintenance en Condition Opérationnelle".

Let me attempt to address this point.

There are no guarantees.  I learned this a long time ago.  An entity can make 
some "guarantee", but that guarantee is good only as long as that entity chooses 
to make good on it, or that entity ceases to exist.

DEC no longer exists.  Any guarantees DEC made to anyone are now worthless.

VSI is not DEC.  VSI has no commitment to make good on DEC guarantees.

VSI is a rather small company.  They are limited in what they can do.  They 
cannot build new VAX systems.  They cannot build new Alpha systems.  Nobody I 
know would want to build new itanic systems.

As far as this topic is concerned, there are no guarantees that mean a damn 
thing, and that includes x86 systems.  They will not last forever.  They are 
available now, but will they be available in 10 years?  20 years?  Perhaps not. 
And so you should see that there are no alternatives for your desires for 
systems to last forever.  Salesmen might make promises.  The promises will 
sooner or later not be kept.

As for certified applications, systems, and such.  While people want to count on 
an initial investment, the universe doesn't care,not one bit.  Reality is that 
ongoing efforts will be required to maintain high standards.

An an example, data backups.  Just because a particular backup is restored 
correctly in no way guarantees the next backup will do so.  It must also be 
tested to see if it will restore correctly.


-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
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