[Info-vax] Rendez-vous autour de VMS" of January 31 2023 report

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/18/2023 5:41 AM, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1 at dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com
> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>> English version of the meeting notes:
> 
> The license news is good. The ADA news is not, but is hardly unexpected.

And I think it is worth noting that VSI did not drop Ada. That happended
way before VSI.

I believe DEC/Compaq dropped Ada sometime back in the 90's.

(instead ACT had Ada for VMS - and ACT later dropped VMS as platform.)

Getting the current VSI maintained compilers on VMS x86-64 are
"must haves".

When that is achieved they will need to look at the "nice to have"
list.

And honestly I don't see Ada make the cut.

Ada is a technical very interesting language but business wise it has
it best years behind it.

I see other stuff being way more relevant business wise:
* improving Python on VMS
* improving PHP on VMS
* get node.js running on VMS (either V8 or GraalVM)
* get .NET running on VMS
(maybe even Go, Rust and R)

> Bare metal is a question of market segments, as far as I understand it.
> Enterprise IT shops in the US tend to be strongly in favour of
> virtualising everything. What is the compelling use case for bare metal?
> 
> The costs of bare metal are considerable, since x86 hardware has a vast
> range of designs. There are probably 50-100 times more x86-64 server
> designs than the total numbers of Alpha and Itanium server designs
> produced by DEC, Compaq and HP for running VMS. Supporting it requires
> writing enormous numbers of VMS device drivers, a skill that is not at
> all common today. The VSI staff who can do it can do other things which
> will be more valuable to the company.
> 
> Running under virtualisation needs only a few VMS device drivers. The
> actual hardware is managed by device drivers for the virtualisation
> software. Those are written by the hardware manufacturers so that
> virtualisation software can be run on their machines. Those hardware
> manufacturers are not going to start writing VMS device drivers unless
> VMS becomes /much/ more widely used.
> 
> This view may seem negative, but it reflects the commercial reality that
> VSI need to cope with.

Absolutely correct.

VMS on VM's meet 80% of customers need for 20% of the cost.

Obvious priority.

Arne