[Info-vax] VMS survivability

[Dan Cross]

In article <tsrg9t$4bfn$3 at dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>[snip]
>But the problem is that open sourcing VMS would
>not bring it on the same path as Linux. The context
>is too different.

In true USENET fashion, this has been well hashed in this
newsgroup before.  But to recap, it's a question of risk
analysis with respect to what is going to drive new use:
adopting a closed-source, proprietary operating system with
time-expiring licensed, maintained by a very small company
that's been laying off engineers in the middle of a
decades-past-due port to the currently dominant hardware platform
(nevermind that the industry is starting to look really hard at
ARM, by the way), leading to legitimate questions about its
long-term viability, or adopting an open-source operating system
backed by a specialized consulting and services firm?

By all indications, VSI is (unfortunately) trying to cater to a
market that no longer exists outside of a few legacy use cases.
That's just not enough for long-term viability.

        - Dan C.