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

[Dan Cross]

In article <tsrpf1$5qhq$1 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:
>>> 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,
>>>
>>> The general assumption is that VSI can't do that as
>>> they don't own VMS - HPE does.
>> 
>> Which is why they should start working with HPE now
>> to make it happen.  Sun didn't own SVR4; AT&T did.
>> Yet somehow OpenSolaris happened.
>
>At that time the SCO group owned it.

You might want to check your priors on that and the exact
timelines.

>But yes somehow they managed to make it happen.
>
>Maybe SUN had some extra rights because they were
>part of the development of SVR4. Maybe the fact that
>SUN was way bigger than the SCO group made it easier. Or
>something else.
>
>But I suspect that VSI would pay more attention to the
>business impact of the move than the IP aspects.
>
>It did not work out business wise.
>
>The open sourcing did not stop the decline of Solaris.

Yes, it was too little too late.  I know a number of former Sun
employees; they almost universally agree that Sun killed itself
by not seeing the economics of the x86 platform and not
embracing open source until it was too late.

Sound familar?

>After a few years Oracle (that had bought SUN) moved back
>to a closed source model.

Almost immediately, in fact.  Remind me, where's Solaris now?

>And the open source version is something that practically
>nobody use and very few can even remember the name of (I will
>save people the wikipedia search - it is "illumos").

Now I'm quite sure you're not very familiar with that ecosystem.

Lots more people are using illumos in one form or another than
are using Solaris.  SmarOS, Joyent, MNX, Oxide and others are
all using illumos.  Who's using Solaris, again?

>Open sourcing Solaris did not solve Solaris'es
>problems.
>
>Maybe it even made them worse.

Oh?  How do you figure?  Please be specific.  Or is that just
idle speculation?

>Not a good example to provide to VSI.

No, Linux is the example here.  It's also VSI's primary
competition.  Indeed, the tragedy of Solaris reinforces the
thesis that open sourcing is really the only way to go; pointing
out the failure Solaris shows what happens if you _don't_
embrace open source in a timely manner.  Or are you simply
saying that VMS can't compete against Linux and is doomed to
failure anyway?

Regardless of all that, however, I'm afraid you missed the point
of the example.  The Solaris example is about how an
organization _can_ wrangle the legalities to get something open
sourced, despite similar challenges to VSIs vis ownership of the
code.  Solaris is not a model of how to manage open source per
se; simply a roadmap to doing it at all.

	- Dan C.