Happy new Year !
JF Mezei
Happy New Year !
Happy New Decade !
I wish everyone a happy new year and decade filled with health,
pleasure, good food and success !
The last decade wasn't exactly glorious for VMS as it started with
Alphacide and ended with dismemberment of VMS engineering, and there was
the La Carly entertainment in between. But there was also a big cleanup
of VMS code with a port to that IA64 thing, as well as the 8.3 version
which is probably to the 2000s what 5.5-2 was to the 1990s.
There will me many challenges coming in the next decade and perhaps some
major changes such as disapearance of the POTS (plain old telephone
system) system and perhaps even conventional television. "The network is
the system" will be more true than ever, so will the "global village".
And it looks like nudity will become standard in airports as we'll have
to go through security naked :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
H Vlems
A Happy New year to all of you!!
JF, I'm afraid that the next decade will see the end of a truly great
Operating System.
The optimism generated by the port of VMS to Itanium, early 2003 is,
for me at least, completely gone.
If somebody would want an answer to the question "Name an extremely
reliable platform for a mission critical application"
then I would no longer dare to suggest VMS.
I understand the need for standardization, just trying to figure out
what kind of memory fits in a certain VAX or Alpha is a RPITA at
times.
However if standardization also means being stripped of high quality
solutions then it is not for me.
Hans
PS
Reading the text above makes me feel old ;-)
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
> It is already 2010 in the eastern most areas of the round planet :-)
>
> Happy New Year !
> Happy New Decade !
The new decade will start on 1-JAN-2011. :-| This discussion comes up
every 10 years or so.
Richard B. Gilbert
It comes up for the turn of the century as well. Just not quite as
often! ;-)
JF Mezei
> JF, I'm afraid that the next decade will see the end of a truly great
> Operating System.
This does not worry me anymore. There could still be a miracle which
gets HP to change its mind about VMS, but I am not waiting for it.
I think the next decade will be the "moving on" decade where things
introduced during this past decade really replace stuff. On-line
music/movies replacing CD/DVD, VoIP replacing POTS telephone, and
perhaps on-line entertainment replacing legacy television.
We have to learn to let go of cherished things when they no longer have
a future. People didn't have a problem letting go of Telex when fax
replaced it.
The problem these days is that it seems that the replacements are not
better than the older stuff. Itunes music is lesser quality than CD for
instance. And VoIP isn't as reliable as POTS. And there are many good
features in VMS that are not present in the products meant to replace it.
Arne Vajhøj
> JF, I'm afraid that the next decade will see the end of a truly great
> Operating System.
> The optimism generated by the port of VMS to Itanium, early 2003 is,
> for me at least, completely gone.
> If somebody would want an answer to the question "Name an extremely
> reliable platform for a mission critical application"
> then I would no longer dare to suggest VMS.
> I understand the need for standardization, just trying to figure out
> what kind of memory fits in a certain VAX or Alpha is a RPITA at
> times.
> However if standardization also means being stripped of high quality
> solutions then it is not for me.
I think there is every reason to believe that the decline
in the number of VMS systems will continue in the next decade.
In 2020 there will be few left.
Sad, but realistic.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
True.
But that is just because the romans did not have a zero.
Arne
JF Mezei
>> The new decade will start on 1-JAN-2011. :-| This discussion comes up
>> every 10 years or so.
> But that is just because the romans did not have a zero.
OK, so the new decade will start in 2011 in Italy, and in 2010
everywhere else in the word ?
:-)
H Vlems
wrote:
I understand that. The first computer I've ever used was a Burroughs
B6700 running the MCP
operating system. These systems were markedly different from other
systems then on the market.
There was no assembler, everything was written in ALGOL. It had
multiple cpu's and virtual memory.
There's little left of Burroughs though there are still sites that run
the software in emulation.
It didn''t matter much to change to VMS in 1983 or so. The point I'm
trying to make is that in 1983
we had a choice of operating systems. Today it's linux or windows.
Professionally the choice isn't much
wider, adding only IBM's mainframe operating systems, with the IBM
price tag, and a couple of unix
flavors. It feels like buying a car and the only choices left are Fiat
and Volkswagen (the high end brands are
owned by these two ...).
Anyway, I hope I have enough hardware to allow me access to my
favorite programming environment :-)
Happy New Year,
Hans
Richard Maher
"Arne Vajh�j" <ar...@vajhoej.dk> wrote in message
news:4b3d5ecb$0$279$1472...@news.sunsite.dk...
That's as maybe; one thing's for sure, and that's the fact that no one needs
a crystal ball to predict that from here till then (day-in, day-fucking-out)
there will be not shortage of white-ants in this group gleefully heralding
the demise of VMS :-(
How inconsolable some must be that VMS is still here in 2010, or are they
all in denial that those of us here with long memories have had to endure
their apocalyptic perditions for over 10 years now?
As one (of many) VMSer who has had to turn his hand to Linux/Windows to
secure any sort of an IT future, I simply cannot understand how VMS's
stengths can go unwitnessed even by those that should no better.
Ah, who cares? I'm off to the Linux server team to hear how they can't
simply upgrade one layed product without upgrading to a new distro (or
whatever it is they call it) of the operating system. And .NET *is* a Web
1.0 server-centric piece o' shit that is there for all to see!
"The browser *is* the client!"
"The browser *is* the computer!"
"The browser can talk to *anything* at the backend!"
"VMS *is* the best server platform on the planet!"
The problem lies not in VMS but in the same scum that has been making the
decisions in VMS for the last 20 years still stalking the corridors :-(
"Yes, but IPsec and IPv6 are not important to VMS as it won't be around long
enough" - you still all make me sick!
>
> Arne
Regards Richard Maher
PS. Nice to see my brother delayed on QANTAS for an hour because "a server
went down". Sheesh - I wonder if there's any technology that could fix that?
PPS. And then ther's the true story about my old boss who was suggesting
rebuilding MySQL from sources to get around some problem :-o
JF Mezei
> How inconsolable some must be that VMS is still here in 2010, or are they
> all in denial that those of us here with long memories have had to endure
> their apocalyptic perditions for over 10 years now?
The gartneresque predictions have been going on for more than 15 years now.
There is one metric left to be measured: when 8.4 is released, it
remains to be seen how much marketing the indian team will be allowed to
make about the new release of VMS.
If HP is interested in showing continued commitment to VMS, it would
want to trumpet 8.4 as loudly as possible to show that its new team in
India has a mandate to do more than just maintain VMS.
You know a company is dead when the IP ports reserved to it start to get
re-used. Port 625, named "dec dlm" is now used by the Apple Server
Manager application... (makes you wonder if the IP cluster on VMS will
use port 625).
> Ah, who cares? I'm off to the Linux server team to hear how they can't
> simply upgrade one layed product without upgrading to a new distro
There are a lot of areas where VMS was clearly superior. But an
operating system is not much use of it lacks the applications you need
today.
>"VMS *is* the best server platform on the planet!"
This is a subjective statement. If you've relied on VMS for over 20
years, you are comfortable with it, you know whart parts of VMS you can
trust, and what parts you can't trust (such as Imap/POP lack of
intrusion detection).
When you move to a new platform, you need to start from scratch, and it
is a daunting project to recreate as close to an environment as you had
with VMS. Some things map well, for others, you need to do thing
differenbtly, and there are things that just don't exist on other
operating systems. And it is often hard to know if a feature does exist
(but done differently) or doesn't exist at all. (for instanceL intrusion
detection on OS-X),
Michael Kraemer
>
> That's as maybe; one thing's for sure, and that's the fact that no one needs
> a crystal ball to predict that from here till then (day-in, day-fucking-out)
> there will be not shortage of white-ants in this group gleefully heralding
> the demise of VMS :-(
>
> How inconsolable some must be that VMS is still here in 2010, or are they
> all in denial that those of us here with long memories have had to endure
> their apocalyptic perditions for over 10 years now?
And what was wrong with that?
Alpha was officially killed and VMS's user and ISV base
further dwindled away, as predicted.
I'm not sure if "they" predicted VMS to be at absolute
zero.
Ten years ago some may even have dreamt of some
kind of renaissance.
Arne Vajhøj
The decline in VMS usage will not stop just because we pretend that
it does not happen.
There are many reasons why it is as it is. The market changed.
Arne
JF Mezei
> The decline in VMS usage will not stop just because we pretend that
> it does not happen.
2009 was the year when I think it became very evident to most that HP
had no intentions of giving VMS a "renaissance". With Sue and the rest
of VMS engineering gone, VMS is now a faceless product.
There is no point in noticing Livermore speeches where she mentiones
development for HP=UX and NSK, but mentions "ensure we support our
installed base of openVMS customers" separately.
The message has been sent loud and clear in 2009.
> There are many reasons why it is as it is. The market changed.
I disagree quite a bit with this. Other operating systems are thriving
in a changing market, including various forms of Unix. Consider how
FreeBSD has evolved into OS-X. Consider Linux. Evolution of old systems
is very possible. Heck, at the risk of causing an increase in VAXman's
blood pressure, even Windows has evolved significantly from its DOS/3.1
days.
VMS has gone down because it was not given the resources to keep up with
the Jones'. False arguments that "customers don't need those features"
were bandied about as *excuses* for not adding the modern features that
modern customers need.
Porting Mozilla was a ray of hope, but it was short lived because this
required too many resources to keep all of the middleware needed for
Mozilla up to date. (I think Hoff or FredK once listed all of the
software needed just to compile the beast).
Guess what, if they can do this on Linux, they should be able to do this
on VMS. If they can do this on OS-X, they could do this on VMS. But you
need commitment and budgets to get it done.
Apple nearly died because it got stuck on MacOS and failed to upgrade it
quickly enough. Digital died because it didn't upgrade VMS.
And in the end, if HP were to pull the plug on VMS today, it would still
show the relilience of VMS, having outlasted 2 companies (DEC and
Compaq) and more importantly, having survived 15 years of constant
attempts to kill it (both by the owners and by the press who reflected
the owner's actions/inactions on VMS).
And even if HP were to kill VMS today, VMS would still have many
useful features that others don't have. Not just clustering, but also
simple stuff like OPCOM, good sturdy security you can trust (except for
pop/imap/xdm), and system management that gives you a really good feel
for your system, who is running what, how many resources they are using
(and ability to limit how many resources any one process can use).
It is a shame that VMS is a great cake, but it just lacks the icing.
Other OS have great icing, but have terrible cake.
My prediction is that VMS will continue to be "developped" until the
death of IA64 is formally announced sometime in the next 2 years at
which point both IA64 and VMS will get one more iteration before going
on 5 year support. However, if death of IA64 is announced before 8.4 is
out, then 8.4 will be the last version.
Michael Kraemer
>
> My prediction is that VMS will continue to be "developped" until the
> death of IA64 is formally announced sometime in the next 2 years at
> which point both IA64 and VMS will get one more iteration before going
> on 5 year support. However, if death of IA64 is announced before 8.4 is
> out, then 8.4 will be the last version.
>
On a related issue:
HP's pages
http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/
tell us that VAX/VMS support will be guaranteed through 2010.
2010 is here, so by year end VAX support would be dead?
JF Mezei
> On a related issue:
> HP's pages
> http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/
> tell us that VAX/VMS support will be guaranteed through 2010.
> 2010 is here, so by year end VAX support would be dead?
##
HP is positioning its support structure to continue to offer OpenVMS VAX
support at least through the year 2010.
##
The word "at least" is important here.
Not sure how accurate the text in the source is but:
<meta name="Keywords" content="vax, microvax, dec, digital, mvax" >
<meta name="Description" content="System and support information for
retired VAX and MicroVAX systems." >
<meta name ="date" content="2003-03-19">
However, going to the equivalent page at HP:
http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/vax/?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN
yields the same date on the content field.
It is not clear whether this reflects 2003 thinking or if it reflects
2009 post-India thinking.
Since there is no longer any development for VAX-VMS, it isn't clear
whether India needs to be involved with VAX-VMS, or if perhaps there
isn't just a small group left in the USA to provide telephone support to
the VAX-VMS support cash cow.
Michael Kraemer
> Michael Kraemer wrote:
>
>
>>On a related issue:
>>HP's pages
>>http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/
>>tell us that VAX/VMS support will be guaranteed through 2010.
>>2010 is here, so by year end VAX support would be dead?
>
>
>
> ##
> HP is positioning its support structure to continue to offer OpenVMS VAX
> support at least through the year 2010.
> ##
>
> The word "at least" is important here.
>
The question is what will happen to the hobbyist program
once the axe falls.
H Vlems
> Hi Arne,
>
> "Arne Vajhøj" <a...@vajhoej.dk> wrote in message
>
> - Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht weergeven -
May I inform you that you've been the white queen ant in the fairy
tail?
You've been quite clear and quite convincing that VMS couldn't do, nah
couldn't be considered a serious product without support for IPsec.
For the record, I agree with that. But the way the argument was raised
suggests (to put it mildly) that you're idea about the future of VMS
is not dissimilar from mine.
I spent the last 8 years at a shopt that ran one IBM (DOS/VSE)
mainframe and four windows NT 4 servers. No point for guessing where
the mission critical databases and applications ran.
Today there's no mainframe and about 100 Windows 2003 servers. One
application or database per machine. The cost of these 100 servers are
is less than than what was spent on the mainframe. Performance
increased by a factor 7 (measured at customer service and product
selling desks). Unplanned downtime just doesn't exist.
In fact we could do without system management altogether, like we all
run cars without having a trained mechanic living in tghe garage.
The sixties were the decade of the computer (the hardware), the
seventies the decade of the operating system, the eighties belonged to
programming languages and, the nineties saw the rise of (inter)
networks. The last decade we just saw people all over the world using
computers straight out of the box for all kinds of purposes without
giving an damn about the underpinning technology.
So where does that leave us? We're old enough to appreciate the
technology and to remember that once technology mattered. In the days
when computer technology was part an art and part unevealed science.
Today, like the car, the computer is a mass manufactured piece of gear
and, like cars, most users just watch the brandlabel without caring
what's inside. Car enthousiasts are probably horrified when, say, a
modern Alpha Romeo car is considered as a new version of a car with
the same logo thirty years ago. It's no longer an Alpha, it's a Fiat
and the fact that part of the outside metal was bent slightly
different than its Fiat counterpart doesn't matter much to them.
The same applies for the computer industry. Ford (or GM, whatever) and
Microsoft are similar. Mass production is the key to profit. ANd we're
all used to GM's, Ford's, Microsoft's and RedHat's products. Because
we can afford them as a regular paying customer.
I don't use VMS professionally, haven't so for 8 years and I seriously
doubt I ever will. So how come I run thirty systems at home? Because I
understand the platform and consider programming an art. No way I
could have afforded these systems on a commercial license and against
commercial hardware prices.
Agaian the similarity with cars is obvious: enthousiasts keep brands
running long after the manufacturer went out of business.
The computer industry has grown up. VMS and other operating systems
were an important factor in making that happen.That's certain. But
allow me the thought that VMS is not a mass market product with a
serious role after, say, 2014. HP may prove me wrong by porting VMS to
the 64 bit x86 platform but I won't be holding my breath.
Hans
PS
a bit long winded perhaps, my apologies if I got too boring at times
H Vlems
> JF Mezei schrieb:
>
>
>
> > My prediction is that VMS will continue to be "developped" until the
> > death of IA64 is formally announced sometime in the next 2 years at
> > which point both IA64 and VMS will get one more iteration before going
> > on 5 year support. However, if death of IA64 is announced before 8.4 is
> > out, then 8.4 will be the last version.
>
> On a related issue:
> tell us that VAX/VMS support will be guaranteed through 2010.
> 2010 is here, so by year end VAX support would be dead?
Michael, there's a link on that HP page. It states that VMS support
for 5.5-2, 7.x will continue until the end of 2012.
AFter that if the end of software support will be announced it will be
at least 24 months in advance.
Hans
Arne Vajhøj
Why should they do anything to stop VMS VAX hobbyist licenses
being issued?
It does not cost them a dime.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> There are many reasons why it is as it is. The market changed.
>
> I disagree quite a bit with this. Other operating systems are thriving
> in a changing market, including various forms of Unix. Consider how
> FreeBSD has evolved into OS-X. Consider Linux. Evolution of old systems
> is very possible.
Possible but easy.
I think it would be more relevant to compare VMS with MPE and OS/400
(I can not get myself ti call it 'i').
> VMS has gone down because it was not given the resources to keep up with
> the Jones'. False arguments that "customers don't need those features"
> were bandied about as *excuses* for not adding the modern features that
> modern customers need.
>
> Porting Mozilla was a ray of hope, but it was short lived because this
> required too many resources to keep all of the middleware needed for
> Mozilla up to date. (I think Hoff or FredK once listed all of the
> software needed just to compile the beast).
>
> Guess what, if they can do this on Linux, they should be able to do this
> on VMS. If they can do this on OS-X, they could do this on VMS. But you
> need commitment and budgets to get it done.
I don't believe in the "VMS on the desktop" dream.
> My prediction is that VMS will continue to be "developped" until the
> death of IA64 is formally announced sometime in the next 2 years at
> which point both IA64 and VMS will get one more iteration before going
> on 5 year support. However, if death of IA64 is announced before 8.4 is
> out, then 8.4 will be the last version.
They will continue to sell Itanium systems quite some time after an
Itanium EOL announcement and continue to release new VMS versions
for Itanium.
So a timeline would look more like:
2012 - Itanium EOL announcement
2014 - last new processor model
2016 - last new system model
2020 - last system shipping
2020 - last VMS version released
2025 - end of normal service
2030 - end of expensive service
Arne
Richard Maher
"H Vlems" <hvl...@freenet.de> wrote in message
news:c08f0307-0b75-4515...@26g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
[lots of stuff]
This is where the argument gets hijacked, or at least our paths diverge. I
am not asking for VMS on the desktop, or even another bollocks browser
implemention. (God knows we've got enough of them :-( ) I am also not asking
VMS to perform the best come-back since Lazarus and compete with give-away
Linux. All of this, I guess, because I have never seen the OS wars as an
either/or proposition. VMS has a place and I maintain a very profitable
place in the OS market and with cloud-computing gaining traction then a
reliable, disaster-tolerant OS may be just what some are after? It's a broad
church and all very multi-cultural out there.
The problem is that customers have been unable to easily integrate VMS into
their mainstream infrastructure and data centres. As I have said before, the
answer lies in integrate , Intgrate, INTERGRATE and not emulate, Emulate,
EMULATE! Stop being ashamed of VMS's strengths and stop trying to quack like
a penguin. (But most importanly, get rid of the filth at HP/VMS that refuse
to act on anything unless they can personally profit from it!)
Regards Richard Maher
BTW (in line with the topic) Happy New Year and I hope everyone had a great
Christmas! There's plenty of life left in VMS yet and let's hope the ghost
of Christmas future paid a visit to VMS middlemanagement this year.
Arne Vajhøj
> VMS has a place and I maintain a very profitable
> place in the OS market and with cloud-computing gaining traction then a
> reliable, disaster-tolerant OS may be just what some are after?
The cloud concept is based on applications/application servers
providing high reliability on OS/hardware that is not reliable.
Arne
Richard B. Gilbert
ISTR a fairly recent incident in which someone lost all of his
"contacts" somewhere in the cloud. He didn't have a local backup so *poof*!
We old timers are sufficiently paranoid that we would not even consider
trusting our data in the hands of a third party service that had no backup!
Arne Vajhøj
> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> On 03-01-2010 19:57, Richard Maher wrote:
>>> VMS has a place and I maintain a very profitable
>>> place in the OS market and with cloud-computing gaining traction then a
>>> reliable, disaster-tolerant OS may be just what some are after?
>>
>> The cloud concept is based on applications/application servers
>> providing high reliability on OS/hardware that is not reliable.
>
> "contacts" somewhere in the cloud. He didn't have a local backup so *poof*!
>
> We old timers are sufficiently paranoid that we would not even consider
> trusting our data in the hands of a third party service that had no backup!
He would not have been much better of with a VMS system with no backup.
A cloud must per definition be horizontal scalable.
It does not necessarily include backup. I would even say
that the core cloud functionality does not include backup.
It is something that belongs elsewhere. Potentially in
another cloud.
Arne
JF Mezei
> So a timeline would look more like:
>
> 2012 - Itanium EOL announcement
> 2014 - last new processor model
> 2016 - last new system model
> 2020 - last system shipping
> 2020 - last VMS version released
> 2025 - end of normal service
> 2030 - end of expensive service
True 64 and MPE are better patterns to follow.
2012 - Itanium EOL announcemeent
2012 - VMS EOL announcement.
2014 - Last IA64 processor.
2014 - Last new VMS version
2014 - last new system models (may be 2015).
2019-2020 - Last support for VMS and IA64 hardware.
The timing of the EOL announcement hinges on what Tukwila will be like.
If it turns out to be too-little-too-late, then the EOL might even be
announced before the end of 2010.
Lets not forget that there hasn't been a significant 8086 upgrade for a
while. Intel will probably let Tukwila come out, appear good against the
2 years old 8086, but when the new 8086 comes out, Tukwila will once
again fall to the back of the class.
And in terms of the last IA64, it could be a simple process shrink from
the Tukwila (which is already a generation or two behind the 8086 in
terms of process).
One must also remember that IA64 is now basically an HP proprietary chip
with HP paying Intel to continue to develop it. As long as HP is paying
Intel, Intel will continue to develop it.
I think that the change in the ENterprise (from Enterprise Storage and
Servers to Enterprise Storage & Networking) is also telling. With
software shipped to another division, it would be harder for the
hardware people to justify the costs of IA64 when they no longer get any
software revenus.
Arne Vajhøj
> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> So a timeline would look more like:
>>
>> 2012 - Itanium EOL announcement
>> 2014 - last new processor model
>> 2016 - last new system model
>> 2020 - last system shipping
>> 2020 - last VMS version released
>> 2025 - end of normal service
>> 2030 - end of expensive service
>
> True 64 and MPE are better patterns to follow.
>
> 2012 - Itanium EOL announcemeent
> 2012 - VMS EOL announcement.
> 2014 - Last IA64 processor.
> 2014 - Last new VMS version
> 2014 - last new system models (may be 2015).
> 2019-2020 - Last support for VMS and IA64 hardware.
Not very realistic for an enterprise system to drop support
4-6 years after the last system model is out.
If purchase process, test etc. takes 2 years then that would
just mean 2-4 years in production.
Arne
JF Mezei
> Not very realistic for an enterprise system to drop support
> 4-6 years after the last system model is out.
How much time spanned between the release of the EV7z (aka: EV7s
qualified for higher speeds) and first announcement of last sale ?
(this deadline was moved a couple of times).
It didn't seem like a very long time to me.
So perhaps last sale is 2 years after last model, which means support is
7 years after last model.
However, once EOL has been announced, the software support is but a
courtesy. You can't expect much in terms of development. Consider that
HP has yet to issue a security patch for POP/IMAP/XDM servers despite
the gaping security hole which they are aware of, they are just waiting
for the release of the next version of the software. And VMS hasn't been
formally EOLed yet.
And once EOL is announced, there will be short live burst of
activity/complaints, but people will quickly accept, comply and go
quiet. Large customers may get a visit from HP sales person to give them
deals to migrate to HP-UX on 8086. (or whatever HP's main platform will be).
Tru64 had a much brighter future than VMS, yet when it was suddently
killed due to HP-Compaq merger, there wasn't a revolution against La
Carly or people tying themselves to La Carly's parking spot at HP
headquarters or unfulrling large banners dropped from the top of HP HQ.
HP has been quite adept so far at setting expectations for VMS. It has
managed to to make people accept the fact that HP has no intentions of
reviving VMS, and when the EOL announcement is made, there will be no
surprise and no upheaval.
When Alpha's murder was announced, people fell off their chairs. But
when I learned of the fate of VMS engineering almost a year ago this
week, it didn't surprise me, and my first thoughts were towards the
individuals losing their jobs, not the future of VMS.
The path has been set. How quickly it is followed is the question.
Bill Gunshannon
Why did Mentec consistently refuse to create a Hobbyist Program?
It wouldn't have cost them a dime.
Why was there never a Hobbyist Program for Primos?
It wouldn't have cost them a dime.
etc. etc.
Be glad for what you have, cuase there is not guarantee of its
continued existence.
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
H Vlems
Richard, I'm getting the feeling that our visions of how VMS could
survive in the future don't differ that much after all.
I am not sure what you mean with VMS inability at being targeted at
the desktop, or that it is undesirable.AFAIK
there has always been terminal support in VMS and that is suffucient
for me.
As for seamless integration, VMS is quite good at maintaining data and
databases. There was an Affinity program once,
a vision of Windows NT worksations and VMS fileservers. In practice
this didn't work too well owing to the differences
in the filesystems at both ends. NTFS integration (here emulation
could be an advantage) in VMS could be better.
The point is that HP doesn't seem to be invest much in new VMS
development. Perhaps the team in India will get the funding.
If not then, well my crystal ball is on the blink, the future of VMS
is probably determined by the time Oracle will support it.
Hans
Richard Maher
"H Vlems" <hvl...@freenet.de> wrote in message
news:ed132a20-a7a5-4c17...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com...
A picture paints a thousand words and I have just finished our two latest
example web-pages that speak volumes on where I see VMS's future lying. I am
now using Arne's very useful posts to explore the wonders of Proguard, then
I need to knock up a small Tier3ChronoLog class, and finally update the
KITINSTAL with a seperate sub-directory in T3$EXAMPLES for the new
Tier3Client stuff. It's all (very, very) good!
As far as Oracle support goes, I have to agree :-( But I can't see what more
HP/VMS could do to make them happy. Anyway, any VMSers forced to use *nix on
a daily basis *must* be experiencing incredible inertia and Windows still
doesn't cut it on the server. (Not wanting to get Kerry going but does
anyone else get these periodic e-mails "The following list of about 50
servers will be upgraded tonight. Let us know if you experience any
problems"? The real joke is that quite often some of the upgrades will at
least partially fail and no one tells anyone or knows which servers failed
what :-O
Regards Richard Maher
PS. If you have an net facing Itanium box that I can use to host my examples
then that'd be great! Ideally you wouldn't be running any web-server at all
and you'd have Rdb installed. (If you don't have an Rdb license then our
"prototype" license should cover it as long as you're not public access or
start doing your books with Rdb)
H Vlems
>
> - Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht weergeven -
I'm afraid I have no Itanium system. All I have are fairly old Alpha's
and old means power hungry.
I can't afford to keep one of these beasts up and running 24x7.
Hans
Michael Kraemer
> As for seamless integration, VMS is quite good at maintaining data and
> databases. There was an Affinity program once,
> a vision of Windows NT worksations and VMS fileservers. In practice
> this didn't work too well owing to the differences
> in the filesystems at both ends.
Such things never work well.
It means that one has to maintain two environments
instead of one. And of course the "workstations"
outnumber the servers and they run the important apps
(mail and word processing). So giving up on VMS workstations
results in NT on both, client and server.
Michael Kraemer
>
> "The browser *is* the client!"
> "The browser *is* the computer!"
> "The browser can talk to *anything* at the backend!"
So beyond any doubt it's good to have a wealth of browsers for VMS.
H Vlems
Yes, that's what happens in the real world. Assuming that filesystem
integration between Windows and VMS would be flawless,
then this two architeture setup will always fail the demand for
standardization.
At Fuji we ran around 1000 Windows 95 clients with 4 pathworks servers
on Alpha/VMS servers, the protocol was DECnet.
Seamless integration with the production environment (VMS and RSX-11M
+) and bookkeeping (CICS on an IBM mainframe, via a DECnet/SNA
gateway).
Moving the pathworks environment to Windows and TCP/IP made everything
a lot more complicated and performance suffered seriously.
However NT on Alpha did improve file access for the clients.
Hans
Bill Gunshannon
Wwwwithout a reasonable workstation environment all the browsers in
the world won't help.
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<ed132a20-a7a5-4c17...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>, H
Vlems <hvl...@freenet.de> writes:
> Richard, I'm getting the feeling that our visions of how VMS could
> survive in the future don't differ that much after all.
> I am not sure what you mean with VMS inability at being targeted at
> the desktop, or that it is undesirable.AFAIK
> there has always been terminal support in VMS and that is suffucient
> for me.
I don't get it either. VMS had/has DECwindows, workstation versions of
servers etc. I just don't get it when someone says that it is not
suitable for the desktop.
Paul Sture
hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---undress to reply)
wrote:
One of the best extras the Hobbyist Licenses gave me was the ability to
run DECwrite. It was very satisfying having a document template which
you could use to knock out Digital style manuals.
Hmm, has anyone converted those (or DEC Document) templates for use with
other word processors?
--
Paul Sture
Michael Kraemer
> One of the best extras the Hobbyist Licenses gave me was the ability to
> run DECwrite. It was very satisfying having a document template which
> you could use to knock out Digital style manuals.
Just a crazy idea:
Would it be possible with those templates to recreate
antique DEC manuals which have only survived on paper?
I'm somewhat annoyed from those low quality scanned
monster PDFs (although it's a good thing somebody
rescued them, of course).
Maybe one could OCR the scans and insert the raw text
in the templates?
Richard B. Gilbert
Well, I have an Alpha sitting underneath my monitor which is shared by a
PC. My PC gets a lot more use than my Alpha/VMS systems and my Sun
Ultra 10/Solaris systems. I use all three for various things but the PC
get used the most. Why? PC/Windows has the applications: Word Perfect,
Lotus 1-2-3. I don't use a database but I do use commercial Genealogy
software to research and record 20,000 mostly dead relatives. Some of
them are very distant relatives! There's software to interface with my
Cell Phone, more software for my old Palm M500 and a much newer
Handspring Treo 90. There's Reflection 4 to give me a VT-220 emulation
to talk to my VMS systems. There's Quicken to keep my checkbook in some
kind of order and Turbo-Tax to figure out my Federal and State income
taxes. There's a Web Browser and a POP-3 mail client.
In some cases I might be able to buy software to do under VMS some of
the things I now do under windows. I would expect to have to pay ten to
two hundred times the price of similar software for my PC and get a
poorer product! The size of the market is too damned small for
economies of scale.
VMS is a great O/S but Digital killed it because they could not or would
not compete on price! Compare the prices 1984-2004 with PC/Windows and
with Sun Microsystems Solaris/SPARC. Sun may be in trouble but Sun is
still there while DEC went down the toilet ten or fifteen years ago.
JF Mezei
> VMS is a great O/S but Digital killed it because they could not or would
> not compete on price!
That sums it up pretty well.
Bob Koehler
>
> The question is what will happen to the hobbyist program
> once the axe falls.
Since hobbyists get no support, why should the end of support for
VAX change anything?
Bob Koehler
>
> I don't believe in the "VMS on the desktop" dream.
Then how is it that I've been running VMS on the desktop since 1984?
Michael Kraemer
Well, I don't know what HP has in mind,
but often enough companies cut off all references
to the past once a product is discontinued.
Maybe to make sure that nobody bothers them again
with such old stuff.
Motorola for example did it with their 88K CPU,
or HP themselves with HP-UX lesser than 11.x.
Try to find online references to Ultrix or DEC OSF/1.
It would have costed almost nothing just to leave
the few 100MB online.
Non-commercial Tru64 disappeared too although it
brought $99.
Michael Kraemer
> In some cases I might be able to buy software to do under VMS some of
> the things I now do under windows. I would expect to have to pay ten to
> two hundred times the price of similar software for my PC and get a
> poorer product! The size of the market is too damned small for
> economies of scale.
That's the situation as it is now,
but it wasn't ten or fifteen years ago,
when the decision was made to let go VMS as a desktop system.
But still VMS would be as capable for that as Linux, for example.
It's all X based.
Michael Kraemer
>
> I don't believe in the "VMS on the desktop" dream.
>
It once was reality.
VMS' demise came parallel to its disappearance
from the desktop.
Michael Kraemer
>
> I don't get it either. VMS had/has DECwindows, workstation versions of
> servers etc. I just don't get it when someone says that it is not
> suitable for the desktop.
>
What I get even less is that people here even
insist stubbornly on VMS being restricted to some forgotten
server niche. As if they had to fear something
from a return to the desktop.
It may not be practical with the current hardware,
und very unlikely for the future,
but it would certainly be a win.
More visibility, more awareness, more developers etc.
Bill Gunshannon
position it was when it ran on the VAX. But the world (and X11) moved
on. It is not, particularly, suitable for the desktop today. Doesn't mean
it couldn't be, just that it isn't. And, like most everything else about
VMS today, its keepers really don't care and have no intentions of fixing
it. Probably the sadest thing about it is that (unless things changed
along the way when I wasn't looking) none of the original code ot hardware
information was ever released to the public so that the current versions
of Xfree and Xorg folks have never been able to add DEC systms to the list
of systems they support.
Bill Gunshannon
Probably because your still running 1984 software. I can still get
CPM but I really don't see much chance of it proving usable in the
real world.
Bill Gunshannon
What a coincidence that it happened at the same time when the
desktop was just becoming the wave of the IT future.
Paul Sture
Michael Kraemer <M.Kr...@gsi.de> wrote:
> Paul Sture schrieb:
>
> > One of the best extras the Hobbyist Licenses gave me was the ability to
> > run DECwrite. It was very satisfying having a document template which
> > you could use to knock out Digital style manuals.
>
> Just a crazy idea:
> Would it be possible with those templates to recreate
> antique DEC manuals which have only survived on paper?
> I'm somewhat annoyed from those low quality scanned
> monster PDFs (although it's a good thing somebody
> rescued them, of course).
> Maybe one could OCR the scans and insert the raw text
> in the templates?
It sounds a nice idea, but an awful lot of work. I once had a go at
converting the FMS documentation from BookReader format to PDF by
copying and pasting and it was a tedious process, to say the least
(though by picking the graphical figures out separately, they did
print correctly, which printing direct from BookReader didn't do very
well).
> > Hmm, has anyone converted those (or DEC Document) templates for use with
> > other word processors?
--
Paul Sture
Bob Koehler
>
> It is a matter of tense. VMS had DECwindows, True.
VMS _has_ DECwindows. As in the latest releases for VAX, Alpha, and
Itanium. Interoperable with every other X11 implementation I've got
my hands on.
Bob Koehler
> In article <$U2j7r...@eisner.encompasserve.org>,
> koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
>> In article <4b41327c$0$274$1472...@news.sunsite.dk>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <ar...@vajhoej.dk> writes:
>>>
>>> I don't believe in the "VMS on the desktop" dream.
>>
>> Then how is it that I've been running VMS on the desktop since 1984?
>
> Probably because your still running 1984 software. I can still get
> CPM but I really don't see much chance of it proving usable in the
> real world.
Now you know darn well that isn't true. I talk about my systems
here often enough, and there's enough information avaiable here
and elsewhere about VMS to know the latest versions still run on
desktop platforms.
Bill Gunshannon
koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
> In article <7qjepq...@mid.individual.net>, bill...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>> In article <$U2j7r...@eisner.encompasserve.org>,
>> koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
>>> In article <4b41327c$0$274$1472...@news.sunsite.dk>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <ar...@vajhoej.dk> writes:
>>>>
>>>> I don't believe in the "VMS on the desktop" dream.
>>>
>>> Then how is it that I've been running VMS on the desktop since 1984?
>>
>> Probably because your still running 1984 software. I can still get
>> CPM but I really don't see much chance of it proving usable in the
>> real world.
>
> Now you know darn well that isn't true. I talk about my systems
> here often enough, and there's enough information avaiable here
> and elsewhere about VMS to know the latest versions still run on
> desktop platforms.
display? When was the last time there was any kind of upgrade done
on the DECWindows software? How many of the features that have been
added to X in the past 10 years are included in the VMS version ?
Michael Kraemer
>
> Yes, and the latest version of VMS is running what for its graphics
> display?
Could use thin clients just like the good old X-terminals.
Wasn't so unusual even back then when you could have genuine
VMS workstations.
Bob Koehler
>
> Yes, and the latest version of VMS is running what for its graphics
> display? When was the last time there was any kind of upgrade done
> on the DECWindows software? How many of the features that have been
> added to X in the past 10 years are included in the VMS version ?
There are currently supported graphics options for all the small
Alphas and Itaniums one would likely want to use as a desktop
system. I don't have the parts catalog, HP does.
Arne Vajhøj
The "VMS on the desktop" dream is not that a few hundred run VMS
on desktop but that VMS would actually compete in the desktop
market.
Big difference. If we assume 1 billion desktop systems, then
just 0.1% requires 1 million systems.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
VMS was pretty good on the desktop when VT220 was
latest and greatest.
But since then VMS has not really had much
desktop power.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
You may consider DECWindows to be as good as what *nix and Windows
offer today, but very few would agree. There is approx. 20 years
of difference.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
>> In some cases I might be able to buy software to do under VMS some of
>> the things I now do under windows. I would expect to have to pay ten
>> to two hundred times the price of similar software for my PC and get a
>> poorer product! The size of the market is too damned small for
>> economies of scale.
>
> That's the situation as it is now,
> but it wasn't ten or fifteen years ago,
> when the decision was made to let go VMS as a desktop system.
VMS were long out of the desktop market 10 years ago.
Arne
JF Mezei
> The "VMS on the desktop" dream is not that a few hundred run VMS
> on desktop but that VMS would actually compete in the desktop
> market.
Digital has the largest number of desktop office automation "seats" back
in the 1980s. The largest corporate email system. Digital had it back
then. It squandered it.
Richard B. Gilbert
"A stern chase is a long chase!" Especially so when you are 999 million
systems behind!
I'm not going to hold my breath!
Richard B. Gilbert
VMS was NEVER really a player in the desktop market. IBM and the clone
makers had that sewn up in the late 1980's or early 90's!
DEC's offering was insanely priced as were their prices for things like
floppy disks; not the drives, the disks themselves! DEC wanted
something like ten times the market price. Very few were willing to pay
such a premium!
Richard B. Gilbert
Threw it in the toilet and flushed has a more correct "flavor"!
Bob Koehler
>
> The "VMS on the desktop" dream is not that a few hundred run VMS
> on desktop but that VMS would actually compete in the desktop
> market.
Oh, OK, you're talink marketing dreams. I thought it was a technical
dream, I always think technical long before I think marketing.
JF Mezei
> "A stern chase is a long chase!" Especially so when you are 999 million
> systems behind!
VMS used to be ahead in terms of office automation desktops. And used to
be way ahead in number of networked computers/users.
Remember that if VMS were able to capture 1% of the market today, it
would represent incredible growth for VMS. And such growth would give
VMS some much needed energy to continue to grow.
> I'm not going to hold my breath!
At the time Compaq bought Digital, VMS still had a chance to be
resurrected. In fact, the short lived "renaissance" where VMS was
allowed a tiny bit of marketing did show that it was possible to grow
VMS significantly.
One of the arguments used as an excuse to murder Alpha is that by moving
VMS to an "industry standard commodity CPU", it would enable a wider
breath of applications from desktops to data centres. (which had been
the original goal of IA64 back in the 1990s).
Initially, we were told to wait because once VMS was commercially
available on that IA64 thing, HP would start to market it as one of its
own products. It didn't. And that was the last reasonable window of
opportunity for a true VMS renaissance.
Remember that after the port to IA64 was done, HP began to downsize VMS
engineering. Had it maintained the higher staffing levels, they would
have been able to push ahead with plans to make VMS more compatible with
Unix, and had they been able to complete this quickly, then all the
desktop Linux applications could have easily been made available on VMS.
And if done right, the #ifdefs for VMS could have been incorporated into
the main open source code, making every new version of the product
quickly available on VMS.
They did manage to port Mozilla to VMS (and all the middleware needed
for it). The problem is that they didn't have the resources to "finish
the job" by having all of the customizations sent back to the open
source code so that it would then be easy to build the apps on VMS
whenever new versions come along. But the port of Mozilla was a proof
that it was possible to build modern applications on VMS.
Yes, it was possible to give VMS a new life, but that would have
required a nudge in both marketing and engineering resources. Neither
happened. Plans to make VMS "unix compatible" remain, but they are now
just pipe dreams still on the roadmap but without the quick delivery
needed to allow easy porting of Linux apps to VMS.
IA64 on the desktop was officially abandonned in early 2004 at roughly
the same time that Intel capitulated to market pressures and agreed to
produce what the market wanted: a 64 bit 8086.
In my case, I held my breath until 2004. HP had a chance between 2001
and 2004 to show that it would give VMS a chance. It didn't.
Between 2004 and 2009, it was a case of "not holding my breath, doesn't
look good, but still give HP a chance". As I recall, there was a speech
by Livermore in fall of 2008 which sealed the deal when she would not
include VMS in the "actively develop" and specified that they would
"support the VMS installed base".
And of course first week of january 2009, I learned that VMS engineering
was being disbanded.
Having said this, despite all the criticisms of the TCPIP Services
product, VMS had made great leaps forwards in gaining the functionality
of Unix. And now that I am learning Unix, I am also realising that the
TCPIP Services did have a few advantages and design improvements over
standard Unix stuff. Heck, the TCPIP> SHOW SERVICES display is
certaintly much better status of your system than LAUNCHDCTL LIST
Bill Gunshannon
Not sure I would buy that. IBM had PROFS and a lot of places used
it. For example, when I got here while the academics used VMS Mail
they also had PROFS and the admin folks were all PROFS. Then, there
was Martin Marietta which was all PROFS. I'm pretty sure Boeing
was a PROFS shop too a that point in time. I can think of a lot
more PROFS shops I had contact with than VMS shops. And they tended
to be larger and have may times as many users.
JF Mezei
> Not sure I would buy that. IBM had PROFS and a lot of places used
> it.
The number of employees who had access to an IBM 3270 terminal in a
company back in the 1980s was limited.
Just about every Digital employee had an email account, either on
All-In-1 and/or VMS mail. It was the largest email/desktop installation
back then.
IBM had a number of emails (PROFS, DISOSS, and others). DISOSS was painfull.
ALLIN-1 is just a couple years younger than VMS (started in 2002).
Arne Vajhøj
> In article<00c3e815$0$23466$c3e...@news.astraweb.com>,
> JF Mezei<jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
>> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>>> The "VMS on the desktop" dream is not that a few hundred run VMS
>>> on desktop but that VMS would actually compete in the desktop
>>> market.
>>
>> Digital has the largest number of desktop office automation "seats" back
>> in the 1980s. The largest corporate email system. Digital had it back
>> then. It squandered it.
>
> Not sure I would buy that. IBM had PROFS and a lot of places used
> it. For example, when I got here while the academics used VMS Mail
> they also had PROFS and the admin folks were all PROFS. Then, there
> was Martin Marietta which was all PROFS. I'm pretty sure Boeing
> was a PROFS shop too a that point in time. I can think of a lot
> more PROFS shops I had contact with than VMS shops. And they tended
> to be larger and have may times as many users.
Even if DEC was only #2, then they sure had a position back in
VT220/VT320 and VMS 4.x/5.x days.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
But at least today it is not technical dream => marketing dream,
but marketing dream => technical dream. No huge sales in the horizon
means no money for development.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
> Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>> "A stern chase is a long chase!" Especially so when you are 999 million
>> systems behind!
>
> VMS used to be ahead in terms of office automation desktops. And used to
> be way ahead in number of networked computers/users.
That is a very long time ago.
> Remember that if VMS were able to capture 1% of the market today, it
> would represent incredible growth for VMS. And such growth would give
> VMS some much needed energy to continue to grow.
But rather unrealistic.
> IA64 on the desktop was officially abandonned in early 2004 at roughly
> the same time that Intel capitulated to market pressures and agreed to
> produce what the market wanted: a 64 bit 8086.
I think the key term is officially. Unofficially the real decision
happen when it was decided to use only for high end stuff.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> On 06-01-2010 03:31, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>> Richard B. Gilbert schrieb:
>>>> In some cases I might be able to buy software to do under VMS some of
>>>> the things I now do under windows. I would expect to have to pay ten
>>>> to two hundred times the price of similar software for my PC and get a
>>>> poorer product! The size of the market is too damned small for
>>>> economies of scale.
>>>
>>> That's the situation as it is now,
>>> but it wasn't ten or fifteen years ago,
>>> when the decision was made to let go VMS as a desktop system.
>>
>> VMS were long out of the desktop market 10 years ago.
>
> makers had that sewn up in the late 1980's or early 90's!
>
> DEC's offering was insanely priced as were their prices for things like
> floppy disks; not the drives, the disks themselves! DEC wanted something
> like ten times the market price. Very few were willing to pay such a
> premium!
In the 80's PC's were pretty expensive as well.
I have seen IBM PC keyboards being sold for 500 USD.
(side note: they were pretty good though)
At that time VT220 and VT320 were used at universities,
offices etc..
It was a significant desktop presence.
But 20 years ago.
Arne
Richard B. Gilbert
The "rot" was beginning to show even then. DEC still dreamed of getting
a piece of IBM's mainframe business. I was still at Princeton in 1990
and the handwriting was on the wall. DEC wanted us to start paying for
stuff we had been getting for free and reduce educational discounts.
When DEC got us all together to discuss the transition, one big group
(Plasma Physics??) decided that they would rather do without support
than pay for it. This of course raised the price to the rest of us.
Another group bailed out and it avalanched!
A year or two after that Princeton's DECUS LUG fell apart. Efforts to
resuscitate it failed.
JF Mezei
> I think the key term is officially. Unofficially the real decision
> happen when it was decided to use only for high end stuff.
This was done way back in early Palmer days.
When Compaq bought Digital, Pfeiffer seemed to want to give VMS a
chance. He was ousted, and the Curly accountant continued Palmer's job.
When HP bought Compaq, it there was again an opportunity to give VMS a
new direction. They not only stayed silent for 9 months, but when they
finally came out, they used the "plan of record" terminology associated
with the bloody murder of Alpha.
There were oportunities to change the course. The were not taken.
When you look at the phenomenal rise of Linux in the last decade, it
shows that VMS could have done the same if it had been marketed and
priced properly. In other words, the Palmer era errors could have been
corrected until about 2004.
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
> At the time Compaq bought Digital, VMS still had a chance to be
> resurrected. In fact, the short lived "renaissance" where VMS was
> allowed a tiny bit of marketing did show that it was possible to grow
> VMS significantly.
When I started with VMS in 1992, I heard from many people that it was
already obsolete and wouldn't be around in 5 years, much less 10 or 15.
Queue famous Mark Twain quote. But...
> IA64 on the desktop was officially abandonned in early 2004 at roughly
> the same time that Intel capitulated to market pressures and agreed to
> produce what the market wanted: a 64 bit 8086.
>
> In my case, I held my breath until 2004. HP had a chance between 2001
> and 2004 to show that it would give VMS a chance. It didn't.
>
> Between 2004 and 2009, it was a case of "not holding my breath, doesn't
> look good, but still give HP a chance". As I recall, there was a speech
> by Livermore in fall of 2008 which sealed the deal when she would not
> include VMS in the "actively develop" and specified that they would
> "support the VMS installed base".
>
> And of course first week of january 2009, I learned that VMS engineering
> was being disbanded.
>
> Having said this, despite all the criticisms of the TCPIP Services
> product, VMS had made great leaps forwards in gaining the functionality
> of Unix. And now that I am learning Unix, I am also realising that the
> TCPIP Services did have a few advantages and design improvements over
> standard Unix stuff. Heck, the TCPIP> SHOW SERVICES display is
> certaintly much better status of your system than LAUNCHDCTL LIST
...I have to agree that this is a good summary.
What will happen?
There are still paying customers who have a large investment in VMS with
code which would be very difficult to port. (And it is the PAYING
customers who decide what will happen.) I see four possibilities:
1) Oracle will buy VMS to keep Rdb customers. Most Rdb customers, if
forced to move off VMS, would probably move off Rdb as well. This might
not be as absurd as it might sound at first. Remember Porsche wanted to
buy Volkswagen, but what came out in the end is the Volkswagen bought
Porsche. Compaq paid $ 9 billion for DEC. Say VMS is worth 1 or 2
billion. Shouldn't be a problem for Larry.
2) Big companies with a lot invested in VMS will get together and buy
VMS so that they can call the shots, after realising that this would be
cheaper than porting all their code, not to mention the decreased
reliability, availability etc.
3) HP will decide to port VMS to REAL industry-standard hardware. I
think the technical reasons for not doing so are no longer valid. After
the ports to ALPHA and then Itanium, this should be relatively easy.
4) HP will abandon VMS, all customers will have to jump ship and in a
few years HP will sell VMS for just a few million, realising that if it
waits any longer it won't be able to sell it at all, or only for a token
price. Could VMS survive as some sort of open-source project?
Probably, but it is not clear a) on what level and b) if this would be
enough to keep big customers interested enough to fund support (which
would make it possible for some folks to work on VMS full time who
otherwise would have to earn their money otherwise). Of course, HP is
not obliged to open-source it, but they might.
What would I like to happen, best first? 3 1 2 4. What do I think will
happen? 1 3 4 2.
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
(Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) writes:
> 4) HP will abandon VMS, all customers will have to jump ship and in a
> few years HP will sell VMS for just a few million, realising that if it
> waits any longer it won't be able to sell it at all, or only for a token
> price. Could VMS survive as some sort of open-source project?
> Probably, but it is not clear a) on what level and b) if this would be
> enough to keep big customers interested enough to fund support (which
> would make it possible for some folks to work on VMS full time who
> otherwise would have to earn their money otherwise). Of course, HP is
> not obliged to open-source it, but they might.
This might have been a bit unclear; perhaps both are possible. Someone
spends a few million on VMS, but also open-sources it. He could still
support his "official" version of VMS, decide what goes in and what
doesn't, even though theoretically other folks could fork off from the
source and create their own branches, much like Linus Torvalds is still
respected in the Linux community, even though JF could get the source
and release his own "brand" of Linux (presumably called JFUX or
whatever).
> What would I like to happen, best first? 3 1 2 4. What do I think will
> happen? 1 3 4 2.
Note that these are all relative probabilities; I didn't mention any
absolute probabilities. :-)
H Vlems
undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <00c156c3$0$1606$c3e8...@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
>
> - Show quoted text -
Phillip, you're an optimistic person...
I don't think option 2 is realistic at all, companies large enough to
afford the step are still trying tou outsource IT or trying to get it
back internally.
Anyway the're in a hate-love realtionship with IT. The cost involved
in option 3 will only be spent by HP if they can keep existing
customers on VMS.
That's basically a money driven decision and with HP being run as it
is, that just might happen.
Option 1 only makes sense if Oracle would want to offer database
engines, sitting on a LAN or the Internet as large black boxes. The
reasons behind the excercise
may be stability, availability, low maintenance and los susceptibility
for attacks from the internet. Will only work if Oracle wants to go to
war with Google I guess.
Option 4 is still at least 5 years in the future (provided HP keeps
current promises).
So my order is 3-1-2-4 (which makes me an optimist too ;-)
Hans
Paul Sture
<c9c21b18-35c7-4549...@l30g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
H Vlems <hvl...@freenet.de> wrote:
> Option 1 only makes sense if Oracle would want to offer database
> engines, sitting on a LAN or the Internet as large black boxes. The
> reasons behind the excercise
> may be stability, availability, low maintenance and los susceptibility
> for attacks from the internet. Will only work if Oracle wants to go to
> war with Google I guess.
Interesting in the light of their impending purchase of Sun / MySQL, if
it all goes through.
--
Paul Sture
Paul Sture
bill...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> In article <00c3e815$0$23466$c3e...@news.astraweb.com>,
> JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
> > Arne Vajh�j wrote:
> >
> >> The "VMS on the desktop" dream is not that a few hundred run VMS
> >> on desktop but that VMS would actually compete in the desktop
> >> market.
> >
> > Digital has the largest number of desktop office automation "seats" back
> > in the 1980s. The largest corporate email system. Digital had it back
> > then. It squandered it.
>
> Not sure I would buy that. IBM had PROFS and a lot of places used
> it. For example, when I got here while the academics used VMS Mail
> they also had PROFS and the admin folks were all PROFS. Then, there
> was Martin Marietta which was all PROFS. I'm pretty sure Boeing
> was a PROFS shop too a that point in time. I can think of a lot
> more PROFS shops I had contact with than VMS shops. And they tended
> to be larger and have may times as many users.
>
Wasn't DEC's boast at one time that they had the largest MS Exchange
server network? Going back to 1997 they also routed their "internal"
phone system over their own worldwide network.
--
Paul Sture
JF Mezei
> Option 4 is still at least 5 years in the future (provided HP keeps
> current promises).
HP deserves a lot of criticism on VMS. But I have no doubts that they
will support VMS for *at least* 5 years after the EOL announcement. And
if EOL announcement includes commitment for one last release, the timer
would start upon delivery of that last version.
Although when you look at VAX-VMS, there was a commitment of a last
version and HP never formally acknowledged that it was breaking that
commitment. But HP still supports VAX-VMS nevertheless.
The way I see it, HP has been pretty good at controling the speed of the
exodus of VMS. Compaq did much of the dirty work with the murder of
Alpha. HP slowly reduced expectations for VMS, getting rid of VMS
customers by order of loyalty.
As it reduces the customer base, it also reduces the breath of needs,
allowing it to reduce development. If your only remaining customers are
stock exchanges, then you just need to cater to their pretty stable needs.
I might be willing to bet on chocolate bar that RTR is used by stock
exchanges. It seems to figure prominently on the road map. And it is
being fully ported to Linux.
JF Mezei
> Wasn't DEC's boast at one time that they had the largest MS Exchange
> server network? Going back to 1997 they also routed their "internal"
> phone system over their own worldwide network.
Yes. That is when they converted All-in-1 to Exchange. But since DEC had
already begun to downsize at that point, it had fewer Exchange seats
than it had ALL-IN-1 7-10 years earlier when DEC was at its peak in
employee numbers.
Michael Kraemer
>
> When I started with VMS in 1992, I heard from many people that it was
> already obsolete and wouldn't be around in 5 years, much less 10 or 15.
and that prediction became true in many (most?) places indeed.
> Queue famous Mark Twain quote. But...
In the meantime he passed away.
So even *that* prediction has come true.
>
> ...I have to agree that this is a good summary.
>
> What will happen?
>
> There are still paying customers who have a large investment in VMS with
> code which would be very difficult to port. (And it is the PAYING
> customers who decide what will happen.) I see four possibilities:
>
> 1) Oracle will buy VMS to keep Rdb customers. Most Rdb customers, if
> forced to move off VMS, would probably move off Rdb as well.
To Oracle, most probably. So discontinuing VMS would be
a win for Oracle. Only one DB to maintain and develop.
> This might
> not be as absurd as it might sound at first. Remember Porsche wanted to
> buy Volkswagen, but what came out in the end is the Volkswagen bought
> Porsche. Compaq paid $ 9 billion for DEC. Say VMS is worth 1 or 2
> billion. Shouldn't be a problem for Larry.
A bit unrealistic, I'd say. Those $9Bn represented roughly
DEC's annual revenue back then.
What's the annual revenue VMS generates these days?
Last time I checked HP's BCS generated less than $4Bn
(with a profitability below HP's average),
so even if one assumes an optimistic 10% share for VMS,
it's "value" would be in the millions rather than billions.
> 2) Big companies with a lot invested in VMS will get together and buy
> VMS so that they can call the shots, after realising that this would be
> cheaper than porting all their code, not to mention the decreased
> reliability, availability etc.
Of course I can't speak for big companies,
but somehow common sense tells me, that if one
has legacy apps on a legacy platform with doubtful
future, the probability (and pressure) is very high
not to port it 1:1, but just leave the past behind
and switch to new apps with similar (or even better)
functionality on new platforms.
> 3) HP will decide to port VMS to REAL industry-standard hardware. I
> think the technical reasons for not doing so are no longer valid. After
> the ports to ALPHA and then Itanium, this should be relatively easy.
And most probably will end up in another lineup of proprietary hardware,
so what would one win?
> 4) HP will abandon VMS, all customers will have to jump ship and in a
> few years HP will sell VMS for just a few million, realising that if it
> waits any longer it won't be able to sell it at all, or only for a token
> price. Could VMS survive as some sort of open-source project?
> Probably, but it is not clear a) on what level and b) if this would be
> enough to keep big customers interested enough to fund support (which
> would make it possible for some folks to work on VMS full time who
> otherwise would have to earn their money otherwise). Of course, HP is
> not obliged to open-source it, but they might.
This would depend on the fraction of third party's IP
and the difficulty to disentangle it from HP's IP.
IBM for example has been asked twice to release OS/2
as open source, but refused to do so, probably because
they don't own all of the IP.
> What would I like to happen, best first? 3 1 2 4. What do I think will
> happen? 1 3 4 2.
5) HP just discontinues VMS and (almost) nobody cares.
So better keep your legacy VAXen and Alphas in good shape,
they might turn out to be the only native VMS boxes in the future.
Michael Kraemer
>
> The "rot" was beginning to show even then. DEC still dreamed of getting
> a piece of IBM's mainframe business.
Which was kind of strange,
because DEC's strength and success
back then was *not* to be like IBM.
Michael Kraemer
> On 09-01-2010 13:22, JF Mezei wrote:
>
>
>> Remember that if VMS were able to capture 1% of the market today, it
>> would represent incredible growth for VMS. And such growth would give
>> VMS some much needed energy to continue to grow.
>
>
> But rather unrealistic.
>
The issue would not be to challenge M$ for ruling the desktop,
but rather keep a healthy desktop presence for VMS itself.
Linux would not be as successful as it is today if it
didn't start on the desktop. If it weren't able
to run on developer's desktop machines it would have remained
a side note of IT history. From there it scaled into
the datacentre. Just as Windoze did.
Michael Kraemer
Fifteen years ago I saw typical VMS users do all their office work with
DECxxxx tools. They would have spit on PCs.
The last sign of desktop life I can recall was that
pygmies' revolt 10 years ago, when some users
opposed the planned discontinuing of VMS workstations.
Bill Gunshannon
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>
>> Not sure I would buy that. IBM had PROFS and a lot of places used
>> it.
>
> The number of employees who had access to an IBM 3270 terminal in a
> company back in the 1980s was limited.
Maybe where you were. Aat the places I worked (including here) all the
administrators had 3270 emulators in their PC's. Some were coax directly
back to the concentrators (I forget what IBM called them) while others
used baluns to change the coax over to twisted pair to run over the new
network wiring and then back to coax in the wiring closet to connect to
the IBM concenttrators. At Martin Marietta all the offices at the HQ's
had 3270's and those of us who spent most of our time remote dialed in
for access, again, using an emulator on a PC.
Like DEC, IBM went through a serious decline and at that point it
wouldn't surprise me if DECcc took the lead fore at least a little
while, but when they competed head to head, I don;t think DEC ever
had the lead over IBM.
>
> Just about every Digital employee had an email account, either on
> All-In-1 and/or VMS mail. It was the largest email/desktop installation
> back then.
My experience differs and I have been doing enmail since at least 1980
(not counting early Bulletin Boards which I don't consider actual email).
>
> IBM had a number of emails (PROFS, DISOSS, and others). DISOSS was painfull.
All I ever worked with on the IBM side was PROFS (well, and BITNET :-) and
the installs at various coproations were massive considering the state of
the IT world in those days.
>
> ALLIN-1 is just a couple years younger than VMS (started in 2002).
^^^^
I assume this is a mistake!
I was doing PROFS when the VAX was still in the 11/750 and VMS 2.0 was
still in its infancy.
Bill Gunshannon
No argument there. They were going toe-to-toe with IBM in those days.
And then both companies went through strong declines, in many ways for
the same reasons, but IBM is doing a good job of coming back. Where
is DEC? (No, I am not gloating, as a lover of PDP and VAX systems I
probably miss DEC, as opposed to Compaq or HP, more than most people
here.)
Bill Gunshannon
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
>
> When you look at the phenomenal rise of Linux in the last decade, it
> shows that VMS could have done the same if it had been marketed and
> priced properly. In other words, the Palmer era errors could have been
> corrected until about 2004.
And when you look at the fact that BSD, which is both technically
superior and much more business freindly has not seen the same
growth you have to take a much closer look to see if the two can
be compared.
And what is the answer? Well, that has been stated here time after time.
Marketing!!! What does Linux have that BSD does not? Hype. Press space.
Active marketing. Proof that you c an make a silk purse out of a sows
ear.
And what does this mean as regards VMS? Well, I think that is obvious.
With marketing (and at this point some serious development to bring it
into the 21st century) given the things it can bring to the table that
other OSssses can not offer even VMS could be on top again.
Bill Gunshannon
I can't think of anytime that could have been true. I have worked
for more than one company who's internel networking would have made
DEC look a kid playing in a sandbox. And, consideringhow badly they
missed the whole PC revolution I am sure there were a lot of Fortune
100 companies running fully MS shops long before DEC would have made
the connection.
Bill Gunshannon
And when did DEC's number of employees ever exceed places like IBM,
Martin Marietta (the whole company, not just the division I worked
in which I expect in itself exceeded the number of people DEC employed)
or Boeing.
Richard B. Gilbert
I think your dating is a little off. VAX 11/750 was about late 1983 and
I believe that VMS 2.0 was history by then. When I came on board ca.
March 1984, VMS was up to 3.x. I think "x" was six or seven.
Bill Gunshannon
http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/timeline
Both are listed as 1980. And that coincides with my memory of my
first contact with a VAX running VMS at USMA.
Paul Sture
bill...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
VMS 3.0 came out in April 1982, and VMS 4.0 in September 1984. For some
reason (maybe it took time to reach the UK) I didn't see either until ~6
months later.
--
Paul Sture
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<M.Kr...@gsi.de> writes:
> > There are still paying customers who have a large investment in VMS with
> > code which would be very difficult to port. (And it is the PAYING
> > customers who decide what will happen.) I see four possibilities:
> >
> > 1) Oracle will buy VMS to keep Rdb customers. Most Rdb customers, if
> > forced to move off VMS, would probably move off Rdb as well.
>
> To Oracle, most probably. So discontinuing VMS would be
> a win for Oracle. Only one DB to maintain and develop.
Sorry, I meant to say "Most Rdb customers, if forced to move off VMS,
would probably move off Rdb as well". If the bean counters give me a
toy OS, a real DB is overkill. :-)
> > This might
> > not be as absurd as it might sound at first. Remember Porsche wanted to
> > buy Volkswagen, but what came out in the end is the Volkswagen bought
> > Porsche. Compaq paid $ 9 billion for DEC. Say VMS is worth 1 or 2
> > billion. Shouldn't be a problem for Larry.
>
> A bit unrealistic, I'd say. Those $9Bn represented roughly
> DEC's annual revenue back then.
> What's the annual revenue VMS generates these days?
9 billion was for all of DEC, not just VMS.
> 5) HP just discontinues VMS and (almost) nobody cares.
> So better keep your legacy VAXen and Alphas in good shape,
> they might turn out to be the only native VMS boxes in the future.
You should see my cellar! I have enough spare parts to keep me going
until I die.
Paul Sture
bill...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
This was when MS first introduced Exchange and before it was commonly
adopted. DEC were hoping to make a lot of money providing consultancy
services.
--
Paul Sture