[Info-vax] VMS survivability

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/18/2023 10:06 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <tsrpoc$5qhq$2 at dont-email.me>,
> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> 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:
>>>> 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,
>>
>> That all sounds very nice.
>>
>> But how does it work for the VMS stuff that are already
>> open source?
>>
>> I can tell you: two handful of people are doing all the
>> work.
> 
> Yes.  Because there is no incentive for anyone else, because VMS
> is clinging to an antiquated closed model and maintainers see it
> as a dead platform.  Do you not see that as a problem?
> 
>> It is problematic to find people to maintain the ifdefs
>> and build scripts of for VMS in many open source projects.
> 
> Have you ever stopped to wonder why that is, and how one might
> go about changing it?

It is not obvious to me why VMS being open source should
make it more attractive to develop open source on VMS.

There is no (non-religious) reason for an open source developer
to not develop open source on a closed source OS.

Back in the days the commercial Unix'es did not seem
to have a problem attracting open source developers.

Back in the same days a lot of free stuff (which today
would have gotten an open source license slapped on)
was available for VMS - VMS SIG tapes and L&T SIG tapes
were full of such stuff. VMS not being free did not
prevent that.

The Java world (here I am going with Bjarne's "Java isn't
platform independent; it is a platform") saw a flood
of open source before OpenJDK.

Open source simply requires people developing
open source.

A couple of well known quotes:

Benjamin Franklin - Well done is better than well said

John F Kennedy - Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you 
can do for your country

VMS does not need people that say:
- VSI please open source VMS
- someone please port GNAT to VMS
- someone please port Rust to VMS
- someone please port XYZ to VMS

VMS need people that say:
- I have ported XYZ to VMS
- I have created ABC on VMS

Arne