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

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/18/2023 10:00 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> 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:
>>> 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.

OpenSolaris was released 2004-2008 (it took some time from announcement
of plan to it was available - lot of work).

The SVR4 rights is a bit tricky to track. One almost need to be
Hercule Poirot to track it, but my best attempt says:

AT&T USL--(1992)-->Novell--(1995)-->Santa Cruz 
Operation--(2001)--Caldera/The SCO Group--(2011)-->UnXis/Xinuos

That brings the OpenSolaris open sourcing in the "The SCO Group" timeframe.

>> 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?

That is definitely not my impression.

It is a bit hard to find number for less used
server OS'es.

But Google was able to find:

https://enlyft.com/tech/operating-systems

They supposedly checked almost 4.7 million companies.

Linux approx. 1.7 million
Solaris 44083 (!)
HP-UX 20114
AIX 13251
OpenVMS 4924
ilumos 80 (!)

I don't know how good their research is, but it was what I could find.

>> 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?

Before open sourcing Solaris was one the worlds major OS'es.

After open sourcing it was a niche OS.

That should prove that open sourcing did not solve its
problems.

Maybe it even made it worse. Oracle decision to close
source it again indicate that Oracle believed so. Given
that it was their money, then they must be the expert.

>> Not a good example to provide to VSI.
> 
> No, Linux is the example here.

But the context of Linux is very different from VMS.

>               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.

That conclusion does not really match with what happened.

Arne