[Info-vax] VMS survivability (was: Re: Rendez-vous autour de VMS" of January 31 2023 report)

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B at jgd.cix.co.uk>,
> John Dallman <jgd at cix.co.uk> 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. [snip]
> 
> Meh.
> 
> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license.  VSI
> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen,

The general assumption is that VSI can't do that as
they don't own VMS - HPE does.

>                                                     and
> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
> in order to survive in the 00's).

IBM did not open source its OS'es. They still make
money selling licenses.

IBM has become a huge general IT consulting
company competing with DXC, CGI, Accenture,
Cap Gemini, TCS, InfoSys, HCL etc..

But it is far from obvious that it would make any
sense for VSI to go that route. It is a very
crowded field - and big companies has huge advantages
when bidding on the big and lucrative contracts.

> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.

So the suggestion for VSI on how to prevent the
license revenue from decreasing slightly every year
is to let license revenue drop to zero immediately.

I don't think they will buy into that.

Arne