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

[Dan Cross]

In article <tsrfpl$4bfn$2 at dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 2/18/2023 4:01 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <tsrdl6$4bfn$1 at dont-email.me>,
>> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> 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.
>> 
>> It worked for RedHat, which was bought for 34
>> billion USD.  By IBM.
>
>Redhat did not go into general consulting like
>IBM did.

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

>Redhat went into open source support. Very different
>business.

Note I said both service _and_ consulting.

>>>> 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.
>> 
>> No.  The suggestion is to pivot into consulting
>> and services around an open source OS, following
>> the RedHat model.
>
>Redhat is/was doing fine.

Yes, they sure are.

>But there are a few things to remember before
>considering VSI going that path.
>
>1) Redhat is doing fine delivering support service. But
>    they may have done even better if they could also have
>    charged real license fees, but they cannot because
>    they mostly did not create the products and the products
>    are typical under GPL or LGPL. VSI can and do sell
>    licenses.

RedHat got started when the commercial Unix vendors, who did
charge for software, were still in their prime.  Which among
them are still selling licenses?

The salient characteristic here is that competition from
operating systems available gratis undercut the market.

>2) Redhat doing fine delivering support service benefits
>    significantly from two facts:
>      - other companies and volunteers are doing the majority
>        of the maintenance work on the products they offer
>        support on

What percentage of commits to the Linux git repository come
from authors with an `@redhat.com` email address?  How many of
those are for major subsystems?  For example, KVM's primary
maintainer is at RedHat.

Moreoever, this sort of ecosystem doesn't exist around VMS
right now because it simply cannot.

>      - the products are widely used products, so even
>        relative low prices generate a lot of of revenue
>    Neither will be the case for VSI.

Yes.  Because insistence on an outdated licensing
and revenue model is strangling adoption.

	- Dan C.