[Info-vax] VMS survivability

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/20/2023 9:35 AM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
> On 2/20/23 6:11 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> Similarly with contributions to the operating system itself.
>> ARM is gaining ground in the server space, and it seems that a
>> VMS port to ARM is likely at some point, if VMS survives.  How
>> does an independent third-party contribute to that, beyond just
>> asking VSI?  As Arne said earlier, VMS needs things to be done,
>> but what if those things require, or would be significantly
>> aided, by open sourcing the OS or large parts of the
>> infrastructure? 
> 
> Many, many open source projects do not have enough contributors.  This
> usually only makes the news when some critical piece of infrastructure
> such as ntp or OpenSSL has a vulnerability that gets noticed, but the
> basic problem is ubiquitous in open source.  Having the doors wide open
> was completely ineffective at keeping those projects adequately
> resourced.  So it's hard to see how open sourcing VMS would magically
> allow more OS development to get done.
> 
> Consider the case of Ada, which a very few people really, really want,
> but no one can make a business case to VSI that it's worth their time to
> do it.  Most of the important pieces are already there in the GCC
> toolchain, so interested parties could retrace the steps of ACT (who
> also didn't think there was a business case to continue supporting Ada
> on VMS) and produce an open source Ada compiler for VMS.  There is no
> waiting on VSI or anybody else.  Anyone with the interest, the time, and
> the skill can do it right now.  Why haven't they?

Exactly.

I previously in this thread posted these two quotes which I think
are sort of relevant:

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

And that is really what it boils down to. The open source
world is not created by people:
- demanding closed source to be open sourced
- complaining that closed is not being open sourced
- demanding somebody else port some open source to ones favorite platform
- complaining that nobody port some open source to ones favorite platform

The open source world is created by people actually producing
open source software.

Linux has been mentioned numerous times in this thread.

Go back to 1991. Linus Torvalds had two options:
A) complain loudly about Minix not being open source (per
    later definition) and try to push Tannenbaum to change
    the license
B) create Linux

We know what he chose.

Arne