[Info-vax] Posts

[chrisq]

On 5/21/24 20:29, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 5/21/2024 1:52 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2024-05-21, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell at munted.eu> wrote:
>>> Why do we go for days without anything being posted in this newsgroup?
>>
>> Because, in the words of Q, "it has all been said".
>>
>> There's absolutely nothing new to talk about. This newsgroup has a lot
>> of off topic (or loosely related to VMS) discussions, but without those
>> discussions this newsgroup would be mostly dead. VMS these days is a 
>> static
>> known system, with no new functionality coming along. All the answers
>> that people need can probably be searched for.
>>
>> In a couple of months it will be 10 years since the port of VMS to x86-64
>> VMS started, and at various points during that decade, many people have
>> clearly been unable to wait any longer and have found alternatives 
>> outside
>> of VMS. The discussions here are only a fraction of what they were even
>> a few years ago.
> 
> There are lot of things to talk about.
> 
> Lots of potential questions regarding VMS system management
> or VMS programming.
> 
> (the non-system-manager and non-programmer VMS user is probably a
> thing of the past)
> 
> The fact that the answer may be in some documentation and
> possibly even be googleable does not mean no questions.
> Questions are asked by humans not perfect search bots.
> 
> There has been a few new things in VMS x86-64 and VMS 9.x.
> 
> And as soon as VMS x86-64 has everything that VMS Itanium
> had, then I would expect many more new features to be added.
> 
> No technical reasons for low activity.
> 
> But most readers (and potential posters) probably come
> because they are interested in VMS.
> 
> And they don't think it is fun reading posts from people
> with little interest in VMS talking about non-VMS things.
> 
> Arne
> 
> 
> 

It's partly a reflection of the decline of text only usenet generally,
as more more recent and feature rich discussion platforms take over.
The provision of good editors for posts, the ability to post image and
other files inline makes a big difference as well. usenet belongs to
a different age and always was a bit clunky anyway, but served it's
purpose well in the terminal and teletype interface age.

Have a list of well over a dozen tech related newsgroups subscribed
to, but most have no posts at all, perhaps one a month, while just
two or three have regular activity. VMS being one of them. Have had
usenet access since the later 80's, so sentimental value, but it's
dying a slow death, unfortunately. That which is static and fails
to embrace the new eventually becomes fossilised :-).

As for VMS, its closed, expensive nature was always aimed more at
business but hard work for software development. Our way or the highway.
Where it did excel was the  reliability of the software and the hardware
it ran on, unique in many ways, back in the day. Meantime, the world
moved on, while VMS effectively became orphaned. Now, platforms and os
are two a penny. What defines success, is the surrounding software
infrastructure and the ability to cover a wide range of applications
and needs...

Chris