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

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/18/2023 4:47 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> 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:
>> 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?

Most of them are still selling. Oracle is selling Solaris.
IBM is selling AIX. HPE is selling HP-UX. HPE is not selling
Tru64.

They are definitely not selling as well as they did back then.

But that does not change that Redhat did not chose
to open source RHEL, JBoss etc. - it was already open
source and they did not have any way to close source it.

>> 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? 

It varies per version.

For kernel 5.10 then Redhat did 5.7% of commits with 3.9% of the lines.

For kernel 6.0 the numbers are 5.4% and 2.7%.

I am pretty sure that Redhat in the past has been over 10%.

But whether it is 3% or 5% or 10%, then the remaining 97%/95%/90%
is definitely the majority.

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

It cannot exist for VMS itself.

It can exist for all sorts of applications and tools.

It just don't.

>>       - 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  Because insistence on an outdated licensing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.

There is a huge server market that are very cost
sensitive (the people that prefer Ubuntu Server
or RockyLinux over RHEL).

There is also a huge market where the cost of VMS is
not a problem - there are still sold a lot
of expensive software.

VSI probably find the second market more attractive
than the first.

Arne