[Info-vax] relaunch or legacy

[Gérard Calliet]

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.

I am confronted with several contradictory necessities. The ongoing 
failure of VSI deserves a book, by the complexity of what is at stake. A 
working model to do would be "digital is dead, long live dec". I have 
neither the means nor the time to undertake this work. And an autopsy is 
easier than a diagnosis anyway.

The complexity is linked to the fact that there are several levels of 
analysis that must be taken into account:
- Purely technical problems: you need x86
- Agenda problems: what rhythm to adopt
- As a result, the pace and ratio of investments
- Current market situation
- Customer motivations in the current market
- Target markets to conquer
- Availability of resources

So far, classic issues. But other levels of analysis are added for a 
relaunch in general and for the relaunch of VMS in particular:
- Results of the previous phase
- Critique of the previous phase
- Choice of the positive to take back and the negative to eliminate
- Opportunity analysis: why, when there has been exhaustion, an 
opportunity makes a rebound possible

These two sets remain factual, there is a level, often unnoticed, which 
is the set of theories used for the analyses:
- These theories establish which methods
- Are these theories definitively established, or on the contrary the 
event of the recovery demonstrates their weaknesses, and they need to be 
reformulated?
- What new theories would be interesting tools to use?

It then remains to ask with whom all these questions should be studied, 
and in what order (deductive, inductive, a bit of both?)

Finally, all this in the situation of a patent failure which adds many 
difficulties.

In the emergency situation that led me to write these few pages, there 
is a great mixture of attempts to answer the various problems. Sorry 
then. I regretted my barely written submission. What would excuse it is 
the sense of urgency in the face of a failure that is almost universally 
announced. But I really believe that there is no reason to be defeatist, 
so we must know how to respond to everything that announces defeat. I 
recognize the ridiculousness of issuing warnings, but what else can we do?

So, for you, and also for all those who have been kind enough to follow 
this thread:

1) There is an actual crisis - at least as seen from France - and it is 
not a crisis.

2) This crisis is not taken into account by VSI

3) x86 is necessary, but making it the top priority has been a mistake: 
constitution of a vanguard that separates itself from the rearguard; no 
problem on the necessity, agenda mistake

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

5) Points 1 to 4 do not exist without reason (passage to the theoretical 
level): the concept of recovery or relaunch has not been grasped and one 
is content to treat VMS alternatively either as a "modern OS like all 
the others when we will be on x86" or as a "legacy system", one being as 
false as the other [inductive analysis from the failure situation].

6) Point 5 implies in this unacknowledged balance of power issues that 
are not understood and an appearance of conflict between "the old and 
the new" [deductive analysis].

I apologize for the probably pretentiousness of this presentation. If it 
can be an excuse, I consider that the respect due to an audience as 
learned and experienced as c.o.v. implies to entrust them with complex 
things.

I come back to the "Digital is dead, long live DEC" reference. I always 
have this reference in mind, following two ways of thinking: on the one 
hand, the decisive importance of the (several) lives of Digital in the 
history of computing, and therefore the need to make serious and 
thorough studies of it, but also the challenge of writing about 
"digital" in a living history in the making (preventive medicine rather 
than autopsy). A style to achieve. But I need to find a helper who is a 
real writer probably 😊

And in any case my problem at the moment is to see a failure of 
recovery, while I still think it retains its value. "Look for the mistake."

Thanks for the attention

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