[Info-vax] For sale: VAXstation 4000/90 128MB Fully Working and Tested

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 6/30/2022 9:58 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 6/29/2022 10:01 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>> Erik (the boss) is 80, I'm 76, Bill in early 70s, and Niel is late 
>> 60s, and really want to retire.
>>
>> We made a pitch to the customers.  Buy the software package, and we 
>> will give you a year or whatever we can to train new people.  They 
>> said they didn't want to be in the software business.  (Almost every 
>> business for the last 30-40 years has been in the software business, 
>> in some way.)
>>
>> Largest customer, now being run by original owner's children, had 
>> their auditors come in, and were told:
>>
>> You can't use that ancient OS (VMS) ...
>> You can't continue with that ancient language (Basic) ...
>> You need a relational database ...
>> And a few more ridiculous claims ...
>> Above all, "you can't count on these old geezers" ...
>>
>> They refused to give them a successful audit ...
>>
>> Can't purchase business insurance without successful audit ...
> 
>  > We have continually offered to help.  Other customers are looking at the
>  > clusterfuck, and are re-thinking about being in the software business.
>  > Codis does all they need to run their companies.  The main problem is
>  > the age of the people involved.  We'd really like to do something about
>  > that, but if we could, we'd be rich and in the medical field, not 
> software.
>  >
>  > Erik has told the customers, the company is shutting down at the end of
>  > 2023. We'd like to continue, but we can't make any promises.  We will do
>  > what we can. But if the beer truck gets us ...
>  >
>  > We have told the customers:
>  >
>  > VSI is currently supporting VMS, and porting it to x86 ...
>  > VSI is currently (I hope John) supporting Basic ...
>  > The auditing firm is a bunch of crooks ...
> 
> There are some reasons for concerns:
> - niche OS (VMS)
> - niche language (VMS Basic)
> - obsolete language (Macro-32)
> - probably non-optimal persistence technology (RMS index-sequential 
> files aka NoSQL Key Value Store)
> - the team getting close to retirement
> 
> But it is not an urgent problem:
> - all the software is supported and can be expected to be
>    supported for many years
> - the team has not retired yet
> 
> What you need is a roadmap showing a long term viable future.
> 
> Obviously I don't know the company or the product that well, so this is
> pure speculation, but something like:
> - keep VMS but switch to VMS x86-64, it is supported and even though
>    Linux is server OS king today then everybody does not need to run
>    Linux, working with VMS is a learnable skill (someone that know
>    Linux should be able to learn VMS in weeks)
> - keep VMS Basic, it is supported and a rewrite would cost a lot of
>    money and create a lot of bugs that would need to be fixed, and
>    programming in VMS Basic is a learnable skill (someone that
>    know VB.NET/Delphi/C should be able to learn VMS Basic in a few
>    months)
> - get rid of the Macro-32, rewrite to VMS Basic or C, too difficult to
>    get people onboarded with Macro-32
> - change to a relational database, besides looking better in the audit
>    report you will actually get some benefits in the form of less code

- and ensure that frontend/UI technology is modern, there are so much
   to choose from, I would suggest Grails - not the most common choice,
   but I think it would be easy to integrate with your backend

Arne