[Info-vax] Posts

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 5/27/2024 6:07 PM, David Goodwin wrote:
> In article <664dfc17$0$705$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>, arne at vajhoej.dk
> says...
>>
>> On 5/22/2024 9:34 AM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2024-05-22 at 12:19 +0000, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> Another reason could be that many VMS systems have reached the end
>>>> of their life and, for various reasons, many have now been replaced
>>>> with non-VMS solutions.
>>>>
>>>> VMS is clearly in a managed decline situation, but the real question
>>>> is just how rapid is that decline before there isn't a large enough
>>>> userbase left to remain viable ?
>>>
>>> When it gets to that point I /really/ would like them to put it into
>>> the public domain and let us the hackers add drivers and other things
>>> to run it bare metal.
>>
>> That idea has come up numerous times.
>>
>> Most believe that it is totally impossible.
>>
>> VSI does not own the rights to all of VMS. VSI has a license
>> from HPE for the old parts of VMS and own the right to the
>> new parts of VMS that they have added.
>>
>> The chance of getting HPE to approve open sourcing the stuff
>> they own are close to zero. Only cost - no benefits.
> 
> What costs would there be for HPE beyond those already paid as part of
> figuring what, if anything, they could sublicense to VSI?

All.

Whether HP/HPE can give VSI a license to sell VMS binaries similar
to how HP/HPE sold them and whether HPE can release the source code
as open source under license XYZ are two different questions.

And with supposedly 25 million lines, then it will require a significant
software engineering and legal effort.

I think many underestimate the effort it takes to open source
proprietary code. There is a well known example. Sun Java -> OpenJDK.
That was a top-priority of the new Sun CEO. But it still took 12
months to release 96% of the code. And it took a few more years
to get the last 4% replaces with open source.

And that was when it was pushed by the CEO. I do not expect
that Neri would push for HPE open sourcing VMS the same way.

It was not cheap in 2014 either. But back then there was some
benefits too - there were customer commitments that HP/HPE could
shift over to VSI.

> And of course HPE could just wash their hands of OpenVMS and transfer
> the copyrights entirely to VSI.

Still work with no benefits.

Arne