[Info-vax] VMS survivability

[Dave Froble]

On 2/19/2023 9:09 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/18/2023 9:49 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> 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.
>
> You can state that and sound totally convincing.
>
> The problem is that everybody that know how to use
> basic search on the internet can detect that it is
> a lie.
>
> AIX:
>
> AIX 7.3. TL1 was released in December 2022.
>
> https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/aix-support-lifecycle-information states that
> IBM supports AIX 7.3 TL1 until end of 2025.
>
> HP-UX:
>
> There was an update to HP-UX 11iv3 in May 2022.
>
> https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/4AA4-7673ENW states that HPE supports HP-UX 11iv3
> (on Integrity) until at least end of 2025.
>
> Solaris:
>
> Solaris 11.4 SRU53 was release in January 2023.
>
> https://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-support-hardware-301321.pdf
> says that Oracle will support Solaris 11.4 until
> November 2021 / November 2034.
>
> Do they have a future? No or probably not.
>
> (HP-UX will die with Itanium, Oracle has clearly indicated that they
> are putting much effort into Solaris, IBM did not invest in Redhat
> to push AIX)
>
> But they are not EOL today. And will not be for several years.
>
>>> 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.
>
> In their days the commercial unixes did pretty well.
>
> Arne
>

A question I'd ask, is, would Linux have done so well, if it was nothing more 
than "free Unix"?


-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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