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

[Dan Cross]

In article <tsrr9q$5qhq$4 at dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>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.

Literally every single one of those has been EOL'ed.
Every. Single. One.

>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.

No, but no one could manage to do what RedHat did with a
commercial Unix version.

Why do you think that is?

>[snip commit stats]
>> Moreoever, this sort of ecosystem doesn't exist around VMS
>> right now because it simply cannot.
>
>It cannot exist for VMS itself.

Of course not.  Because VMS is closed and proprietary, and
tightly coupled to a handful of platforms that are dead or
dying, and the port to the most important server platform
currently isn't done yet.

Want to move VMS to ARM?  Too bad; you can't do it.  RISC-V?
Oh well.

>It can exist for all sorts of applications and tools.
>
>It just don't.

See above.

>>>       - 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  Because insistence on an outdated licensing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.

Right now, VSI doesn't seem to have any real market.

I'll be sad when VMS dies because people couldn't see beyond the
way it's always been done.

	- Dan C.