[Info-vax] Real live example...

[Dan Cross]

In article <tt5b4i$qn5$1 at panix2.panix.com>,
Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>>Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>>>David Goodwin  <dgsoftnz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>The only guarantee of a future is for the source to be made available under
>>>>a worthwhile license. Without the source there are no long-term guarantees.
>>>
>>>This is likely true, but how are you going to convince someone at HPE of this?
>>>It's not like VSI has any choice in the situation.
>>
>>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.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean here.  Sun did release an open-source version of
>Solaris 2, but that was because they actually saw a market and were already
>putting considerable effort into maintaining the OS.  (And there was really
>no SysV code left in Solaris 2 at that point.)

The latter point is certainly not true; there's a ton of
System V code _still_ in illumos.

>The problem is that nobody at HPE cares about VMS and they don't care enough
>to do anything with it, like the effort to release it as open source.  VSI
>cares about VMS, but they don't have any rights to do anything like that.

Then take the examples of Multics, Plan 9 and Research Unix, all
of which were open-sourced after there was no interest in them
in their respective owners anymore.

>>So there is precedent.
>
>I don't see the situations as even vaguely related.  But feel free to get
>on the phones and call HPE and suggest that they open-source VMS.  But first
>you'll have to find someone at HPE who knows what VMS actually is.

The point is: things that seem difficult, or even impossible to
open source have, in fact, been open-sourced.

>While you're at it, feel free to call someone at Oracle and ask them to 
>open-source SunOS 4.1.4.  If you can actually get someone to understand 
>that SunOS is different than Solaris you'll have got farther than anyone else 
>ever has.

I'll make some inquiries.

	- Dan C.