[Info-vax] Real live example...

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/22/2023 9:31 AM, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <tt54sb$p0h$1 at reader2.panix.com>,
> cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
> 
>> This is why I mentioned Sun earlier, though most people seemed
>> to utterly miss the point by fixating on Sun's eventual failure.
>> But the critical observation was Sun was able to do this with
>> Unix, which seemed like an impossible task at the time...until
>> it actually happened.
> 
> It took them lawyer-years, which was quite expensive. HPE would either
> have to do that work themselves, or contract it out. I don't think they
> have that much motivation about the future of VMS.

The relative size/power of VSI-HPE is far from the same
as of Sun-TSG.

But in the end money matters.

If Sweeney and Gedda walk in Neri's office and say "we
have an analysis here that show we can make 200 M$ more in
profit by open sourcing VMS", then he will not answer
"no" - he will ask "what do you need from me and how do
you propose we split the money?".

The problem is that the business case is not there.

Sun open sourced 3 large chunks of software:
* StarOffice that became OpenOffice that was forked
   as LibreOffice
* Solaris that became OpenSolaris that was forked
   as Solaris and illumos
* Java that became OpenJDK

Seen from the user perspective then it went OK:
* LibreOffice never took over from Microsoft Office and is niche today
   compared to Microsofts and Googles offerings, but it is actively
   developed and I believe the users are quite happy.
* Solaris is in maintenance mode at Oracle and illumos has not
   taken off, but they still exist
* OpenJDK thrive with backing from Oracle, IBM traditional,
   IBM Redhat, Anazon, SAP, Microsoft etc. and  huge open
   source eco system

Let us score that 2.25/3.0 (0.75 for LO, 0.5 for illumos
and 1.0 for OpenJDK).

But from a business perspective it has been a disaster
for Sun/Oracle:
* there were no money on OOo/LO so it was spun off to
   volunteers
* there were no money in OpenSolaris so Solaris was
   put in maintenance mode
* Oracle has changed the licensing model for the
   commercial Java offering again and again, but nothing
   make them money (they make a ton of money on products
   using Java but that is a different business)

Let us score that 0.5/3.0 (0.0 for LO, 0.25 for Solaris
and 0.25 for Java).

No business case means that it will not happen.

Arne