[Info-vax] VMS survivability

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/19/2023 4:48 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <tst9dd$dhc4$1 at dont-email.me>,
> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 2/18/2023 10:06 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>> In article <tsrpoc$5qhq$2 at dont-email.me>,
>>>> 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.
> 
> It's prohibitively expensive to do so today.  Should commercial
> vendors port to OpenVMS using the hobbyist program?  How about
> open source vendors?

????

Commercial vendors can use VSI's excellent ISV program.

Open source developers can use either same ISV program
or hobbyist program.

Minimum cost = zero.

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

Practically all software vendors has developer programs.

Including VSI.

Cost is not an issue.

>> Open source simply requires people developing
>> open source.
> 
> ...which requires an incentive, which no one has for VMS.  Very
> few people in the open source world are running it, so why would
> they develop for it?  What incentive does anyone have to develop
> for a closed proprietary platform controlled by a single, small
> company?

It is an observable fact that open source is developed for
closed source platforms.

>> 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
> 
> So I know a lot about OS implementation on x86, but have no
> practical way to contribute to getting OpenVMS running.  Oh
> well.

There are a few hundred thousand open source projects
to get running on VMS.

>> 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
> 
> How, pray tell, is one going to cooperate in, say, porting GNAT
> or Rust or LLVM to VMS, when all that development is being done
> in a highly proprietary context that by its very nature
> precludes collaboration?

Close source does not preclude collaboration.

>                            Suppose somebody finds a latent bug in
> the OS that's tickled by the new compiler; how does one help get
> that fixed without the source code?  Sure, provide a really good
> bug report, but none of that helps people do what you claim VMS
> needs above.

The people that actually do port open source to or develop
open source for VMS does not seem to have that problem.

They report it. VSI engineering responds.

Not really that different from open source for the vast majority
of developers that don't want to do OS fixes themselves.

Recent example: Mark Daniels and the link time issue.

Arne