[Info-vax] VMS survivability

[Dan Cross]

In article <tsrl70$5dop$1 at dont-email.me>,
Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>On 2/18/2023 5:08 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <tsrf3b$4krc$1 at dont-email.me>,
>> Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> 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, 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).
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>
>>> What benefits do you imagine for VSI, for customers,
>>> if VSI were to do what you suggest.  Talking about
>>> the "open source" issue.
>>
>> Establishment of a developer ecosystem, crowd-sourced fixes for
>> bugs, security auditing, and ensuring the longevity of the
>> software by no longer tying its existence to a very small
>> company that las recently laying off engineers.
>>
>> In the meanwhile, VSI can dedicate itself to a long-term
>> lucrative business model that, realistically speaking if
>> they're talking about expanding the customer base at all,
>> they'll have to lean into anyway.
>>
>>> That ignores the fact that they do not have the right to
>>> do so, at least with what they got from HP.
>>
>> You quoted the part of my message that read that they should
>> begin, "doing the necessary legal work to make that happen."
>> Obviously this has not yet happened.  That does not mean they
>> should not be working to make it possible.
>>
>>> I've
>>> read that what VSI produces is theirs, and they could do whatever they want with
>>> it.  We're pretty sure that any of the Macro-32 and Bliss code isn't from VSI.
>>
>> Sounds like something lawyers should start talking about.  Again
>> I point to the model of what Sun microsystems was able to do
>> with open sourcing a System V Unix variant.
>>
>>> But my primary question, what benefits do you see of "open source"?
>>
>> Let me turn this around on you: what do you see as the benefits
>> of a closed-source, for-pay licensing model?  How does that
>> drive sales and benefit customers?  How many margin dollars do
>> they anticipate to make on licensing?
>
>Today, I do not see any benefits, and I do see some downside, to the for-pay 
>licensing model.  Nor have I seen such for some years now.
>
>I may have mentioned in the past that I think VMS should be free to use, with 
>mandatory support for commercial use.  I learned long ago that recurring revenue 
>sure beats one-time revenue.
>
>Thing is, VMS could do without licensing fees, and doesn't need to be open 
>source to do so.  Two different things.  So, again, I ask, what benefits might 
>open source provide.  Not much that I can see.

As I said above:

    Establishment of a developer ecosystem, crowd-sourced fixes
    for bugs, security auditing, and ensuring the longevity of
    the software by no longer tying its existence to a very
    small company that las recently laying off engineers.

It's also a matter of risk management.  If I do not have the
source code, how can I ensure that the continued longevity of
the software should VSI fail in the market?

As other vendors have discovered, it is _more_ lucrative to give
the operating system away than to hold it close to the vest.

As to the idea of keeping it closed-source and proprietary, but
freely available, two relatively-recent counter-examples are
BeOS and NeXTStep (and then OpenStep).  One could argue that the
latter lives on in macOS, but note that at least the core kernel
there is open source.

Interesting and superior technology always loses relative to
simple economics.  Linux is available gratis; VMS is not.  Ergo,
VMS cannot compete.  30 years ago, Linux was strictly worse than
VMS in every measurable way; now the inverse is true.  This is
not an accident; economics dictate that proprietary will always
lose going forward.

>I'm not sure that VSI can finish the port without the added income of license 
>fees.  Don't know.

That's a fair point.  Note in my original post I said that VSI
should complete the x86_64 port and _then_ figure out how to
open source the OS and pivot to consulting and services.

	- Dan C.