Sue leaving the VMS eng. group
DaveG
years. Not sure if she's leaving HP or not. A replacement has been
named.
se...@obanion.us
As professional as Sue has always been, this just breaks my heart.
Must also be the end of the Boot camps...
Sean
Alan Frisbie
I am greatly saddened by this news. Sue has always been one of my
favorite people and I hate to see her leaving the VMS group.
Alan Frisbie
JF Mezei
---------
From: "McQuaid, Ann" <ann.m...@hpXX.com>
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 18:54:02 +0000
Subject: OpenVMS Customer Program Announcement
Dear OpenVMS Community,
After 15 years with OpenVMS Engineering, Sue Skonetski will be pursuing
new opportunities. She has made many contributions to OpenVMS during her
tenure which have led to OpenVMS' long standing success. Many thanks to
Sue for her energy and dedication.
Sue will be succeeded by Sujatha Ramani who will assume Sue's
responsibilities including Technical Customer Programs and Communications,
Sujatha holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and an MBA. She
comes to this position with over 17 years of experience in the IT
industry. She has been working for the last 11 years at HP and has
experience in a multitude of business units including PSG, TSG and IPG.
Sujatha brings rich experience in Sales, Marketing, Operations,
Channels Management and Enterprise Account Management. She has won
several recognitions including the "HP Presidents Club Winner" for
consistent sales performance. Sujatha was recognized the "Young
Achiever" By CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) in the Corporate
IT category.
Please join me in welcoming Sujatha and in wishing Sue the very best.
Best regards,
Ann
P.S. If you plan on attending the HP Tech Forum, please stop by the
Business Critical Systems Booth and meet Sujatha.
--------
VAXman-
Since you seem to be the ONLY one who has received this, would you
post its contents here?
I wish that HP would be a bit more honest and tell all of us what
it's doing to further destroy VMS and our livelihoods, but I have
never trusted HP.
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
http://www.quirkfactory.com/popart/asskey/eqn2.png
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"
DaveG
> In article <012f4df3-39ca-4960-9691-917779f1e...@e23g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>, DaveG <david.gudew...@abbott.com> writes:
>
> >Just got an email from Ann McQ. Sue is leaving the VMS group after 15
> >years. Not sure if she's leaving HP or not. A replacement has been
> >named.
>
> Since you seem to be the ONLY one who has received this, would you
> post its contents here?
>
> I wish that HP would be a bit more honest and tell all of us what
> it's doing to further destroy VMS and our livelihoods, but I have
> never trusted HP.
> --
> VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
>
> http://www.quirkfactory.com/popart/asskey/eqn2.png
>
> "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"
I am certain I was not the ONLY one to get this message. And I
noticed that JF has already posted the text. I tend not to do this
what with full name, rank and serial numbers visible.
Malcolm Dunnett
> After 15 years with OpenVMS Engineering, Sue Skonetski will be pursuing
> new opportunities.
That's frequently a euphemism for "fired". Hope that's not the case here.
Sue's one of the best DEC/Compaq/HP people I've run into over the past
33 years.
ps to JF - how do you get to be one of the "VMS Community" that rates
receiving the notification? I've only been a VMS customer for 29 years,
I guess that's not long enough to qualify.
JF Mezei
> I am greatly saddened by this news. Sue has always been one of my
> favorite people and I hate to see her leaving the VMS group.
Lets just say that the wording of the announcement was carefully chosen
by HP. (update: someone else noticed the wording too but it isn't up to
me to confirm/deny what really is happening, and whether the
announcement represents the full scope of the changes or not, or whether
Mark Hurd prefers chocolate or vanilla ice cream.)
Sue is a very professional and patient person. Her dedication to Digital
goes far beyond the 15 years stated by Ann McQuaid. Digital has been
her career/family for (I am sure Sue can correct me on this) over 25
years. She knew Ken Olsen personally.
Guys, this shouldn't sound like an obituary. Sue is now free of HP's
hold, and will be able to pursue a new career inside or outside of VMS
community with a company/organisation that will undoubdtely greatly
value her personality, patience, perseverance, and especially her
personnal knowledge of a very valuable enterprise community. (the list
of positive qualifications is extensive, I can't list them all in one
message).
Sue was an incredible asset to her employer and will be to her next
employer. She has an incredible ability to keep the VMS community
together (and everyone here knows how demanding and complaining buch we
are !) despite the total lack of desire from HP to keep us informed. And
she had the uncanny ability to change people's attitude that VMS was
doomed into a positive attitude that VMS was succesful.
She also has had an extreme sense of professionalism and ability to toe
the corporate line when it was time to do so even if she disagreed with it.
When you consider all that VMS engineering has gone through since the
Palmer era, and especially what has been happening in the last few
months, Sue's dedication to her job has been remarkable. She has
continued to send out her newsletters, always as cheerful and positive
as ever.
Sue also brought to the VMS community something unique: A PERSONNAL TOUCH.
Consider the number of problems Sue was able to solve for large and
small customers alike and, contrary to many large corporations where
customers are nothing but numbers, Sue actually sought to meet and know
as many customers as she could on a personal level.
If I were the president of IBM, I would hire Sue right away because of
the value she would bring to the company.
Ed Wilts
> P.S. If you plan on attending the HP Tech Forum, please stop by the
> Business Critical Systems Booth and meet Sujatha.
Enjoy it while you can. Sue's job has also gone to India so this
might be the last time you hear from Sujatha.
Since my VMScluster is about to celebrate's its 10th cluster_ftime
anniversary, seeing Sue leave does not make me any happier today.
.../Ed
Tybalt> say f$getsyi("cluster_ftime")
30-MAY-1999 07:28:07.05
decfreak-AT-gmail-DOT-com
Sue is such a great person
... very big footprints for Sujatha to fill.
>Must also be the end of the Boot camps...
Hopefully they woun't continue in Bangalore ... :-(
Oliver
(DECfreak)
VAXman-
Now we'll get is the smell of tamarind and lime pickle.
Richard B. Gilbert
A little too cryptic for me!!
If you are speaking of outsourcing Sue's job to India, ROTF & LMAO!
They MIGHT be stupid enough to try it! Probability of success outside
of India is about 0.0000001!
Sue
Dear Malcolm,
You needed to be part of my distribution list to get the email, there
is no slight intended.
And I am still looking at this news group ;')
And no I was not fired, just looking for a job.
Sue
JF Mezei
> And no I was not fired, just looking for a job.
I have it on good authority that Sue was caught red-handed stealing a
black felt marker from the office supplies cabinet without having filled
the pre-requisite paperwork and getting signed approval from the
executive VP in cuppertino, and that is cause got immediate dismissal
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) ;-)
JF Mezei
> If you are speaking of outsourcing Sue's job to India, ROTF & LMAO!
> They MIGHT be stupid enough to try it! Probability of success outside
> of India is about 0.0000001!
It isn't outsourced. HP has moved that function to a different HP
division in a different location.
Tore Sinding Bekkedal
> Here is the text of the announcement:
> ---------
>
> After 15 years with OpenVMS Engineering
...or 25 years in DEC/Compaq/HP in total...
> [Sujatha] has been working for the last 11 years at HP...
Wow, so she's witnessed the majority of the company's downward spiral
in product quality? That is exceptionally confidence-inspiring.
> and has
> experience in a multitude of business units including PSG, TSG and IPG.
> Sujatha brings rich experience in Sales, Marketing, Operations,
> Channels Management and Enterprise Account Management.
Fantastic! Just what HP needs, another MBA taking the place of an
exceptionally competent person. Good going, HP - If you keep up at
this pace, you'll get to be Chrysler soon. Fiat owns a few IT
companies, you know.
I can picture the advertisements now:
"HP (R) - No real products left, but we're probably too big to die!
(tm)".
(The Shrugging Businessman logo is a registered trademark of HP.)
This is... indescribably unfair. I hope Sue finds something much
better to do, in a better company. What she means to the community is
impossible to quantify (and thus hard for an MBA to understand), but
if it weren't for her, I would be considering VMS an interesting
historical footnote "by that guy who made Windows NT" like most other
people my age do, thanks to your impeccable mismanagement.
-Tore
Sue
Thank you for such an amazing note. And thanks to everyone else for
their support.
I am not real sure that the president of IBM reads the VMS news
group.
I will be reading HP mail until June 5th after that as a VMS fan on my
Hotmail account.
And who ever mentioned it, no I did not get fired. But I am looking
for a job.
Warm Regards.
Sue
Sue
yep its those markers is it red handed for black markers and black
handed for red markers, what about purple and green.
It would do a lot for me to get fired, I love what I do. I work with
the smartest people in the world.
Sue
Richard B. Gilbert
That's libelous JF!
Richard B. Gilbert
If they were all that smart you would be running HP!
JF Mezei
-What happens to the VMS ambassadors ? Do they still exist, or will they
be watered down because there is nobody to coordinate communications
with them ?
-What happens to Hobbyist programme ? Sue was the contact/coordinator.
Does that move to her replacement, or is that something that will be in
a vacuum ?
-What happens to coordination with the user group formerly known as
DECUS (I think it is called Connect this week ? Will Sue's replacement
in india be a central worldwide contact for VMS related issues, or will
there be some local representative in each country ?
-Will Sue's most excellent communications such as the Digital Technical
Journal, and her email updates continue with her replacement, or will
her replacement concentrate only on sale opportunities ?
-Will the new gang in India work extremely hard to prove they can handle
the job and end up giving us more than we had before ?
IanMiller
The end of an era yes. The end of VMS - No.
ja
Well said, Ian!
Instead of bemoaning the past, why not accept that change happens and
start off by welcoming someone who has a very hard act to follow?
This has nothing to do with disrespect for Sue S., with whom I have
worked for more years than I can remember.
The note by someone pointing out that she is now "free" to pursue
activities without the "restrictions" placed on her by a very large
enterprise, is extremely important, I think. How about a Boot Camp
(under another name), organized by Sue and held in, say, Bangalore?
Nashua may be nice in the Spring and Fall, but, that hotel, all those
Yanks, ...
We should treat this change as an opportunity to regroup and look to
the future. If half of what you say about OpenVMS is true, then why
are so many of you so negative and sitting on your behinds instead of
getting together?
The Open Source movement is an example which we should attempt to
follow: have an idea, share it, build it, support it, have another
idea, ...
For those that feel the need to bash India and other things foreign,
perhaps they might like to think about how long their respective
countries have been considered "civilized" compared to India or China
for that matter? And how many of the indigenous population were
slaughtered by those arriving in the country who considered their way
was better?
See you in the bright, new future!
JF Mezei
> For those that feel the need to bash India and other things foreign,
This isn't about bashing India. It is about dumping highly experienced
people who have built a product and have industry leading skills and
know how to make quality software in exchange for unknown quality and
quantity folks who may or may not have any experience with VMS. In the
software industry, talent is an asset, not a liability. And HP is
dumping a highly valuable asset in exchange for hiring what is
essentially commodity humans.
As a country, India has done the right thing by investing in education
and now have very capable people. However, in most outsourcing schemes,
the original company does this to lower costs and gives the outsourcing
company defined work guidelines and phone answering scripts and the
people are not given the latitude to make decisions.
There are similar problems when you outsource locally too, with the
people brought in given very strict mandates that they cannot deviate from.
The problem with India is similar to Japan's image in the 1970s. They
had an image of building cheap plastic toys. It took them a couple of
decade to shed that image and obtain an image of high quality products.
Right now, India has an image of low quality low cost work. It isn't
because of the people, it is because what their clients tell them what
to do.
IanMiller
Note that a lot of software work has been done in India and other
countries for years - this is true for most operating systems you know
of.
Do you really think MS Windows is developed in Redmond?
R.A.Omond
> On May 6, 2:30 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
>> P.S. If you plan on attending the HP Tech Forum, please stop by the
>> Business Critical Systems Booth and meet Sujatha.
>
> Enjoy it while you can. Sue's job has also gone to India so this
> might be the last time you hear from Sujatha.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I see no evidence
that Sue's job has been outsourced to India. Just because
her successor has an Indian-sounding name ...
Neil Rieck
> Here is the text of the announcement:
> ---------
>
Is this related in any way to "the big secret"?
NSR
Neil Rieck
> Just got an email from Ann McQ. Sue is leaving the VMS group after 15
> years. Not sure if she's leaving HP or not. A replacement has been
> named.
This is very sad news since she was one of the old-timers from DIGITAL
p.s. I have observed things at my employer's company which indicates
(to me) that HP is trying to get rid of everything related to DEC or
Compaq. (while the decision to move VAX-VMS applications to high
powered HP PCs are questionable, I do not understand why they did they
were talked into doing the same thing with not-so-old high-powered
Alphas)
NSR
David Biddulph
news:4a02b343$0$90262$1472...@news.sunsite.dk...
From an earlier message in this thread, quoting the text of the announcement
from Ann McQuaid:
"Sujatha was recognized the "Young Achiever" By CII Confederation of
Indian Industries) in the Corporate IT category."
From http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/sujatha/ramani :
"Sujatha Ramani
Regional Sales Manager at Hewlett-Packard India
View full profile | Contact Sujatha Ramani
Currently: Regional Sales Manager at Hewlett-Packard India; Regional Sales
Manager at Hewlett Packard India Pvt Ltd
Past: Telecom Marketing Manager at Wipro Infotech Ltd
Education: ; Seethalakshmi Ramasamy College;
. Mysore Area, India
. Information Technology and Services
Sujatha Ramani
Regional Sales Manager "
From http://www.megaronsupport.com/delivering.htm:
"Sujatha Ramani
Hewlett Packard bangalore
April 2006"
From http://www.rskschool.com/cgi-bin/list.pl?year=1986:
"Sujatha ramani( r. sujatha) Working with Hewlett Packard in Bangalore. Have
a daughter, who is 2 1/2 yrs old. "
Some evidence, therefore, that Sujatha not only has an "Indian-sounding
name", but has, at least in the past, been working in India. We wish her
well in her new role.
--
David Biddulph
VAXman-
They'll get more Bangalore for their buck, NOT!
johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk
Do YOU really think that VMS customers are likely to be impressed by
someone asserting "development in India works for Microsoft"?
I've been around long enough to remember when Motorola cellphone
handset development started the offshoring trend. It started because
Motorola found that by developing in India they could get "zero
defects". My personal opinion reflecting on that particular miracle is
that one important reason it worked for Motorola is because they had
first choice of all the best people and got them at bargain prices.
Those coming later eg now can't get the best people at the same low
prices, and anyone who's used outsourced services (regardless of
sector or location) will be familiar with the results of using
outsourcing for cost reduction, whether it be for engineering, tech
support, or "simple" customer admin (as any BT UK customer who's dealt
with BT's Indian offshoots can tell you).
You also wrote: "The end of an era yes. The end of VMS - No. "
Actions speak louder than words. Unless there's a secret miracle
imminent (hello JF), HP's recent actions all point in one direction so
far, regardless of the merits (or location) of Sue's replacement.
And that leads neatly back to Sue. I never met Sue but all this
electrickery stuff means that sometimes you don't need to meet someone
to get to know them. Thank you Sue for everything you've done for your
community, enjoy pastures new (best of luck in these troubled times),
and in the meantime have a lovely party on May 28th!
mw4...@mucweb.de
The end of an era, that's obvious. For anything else, the future will
tell. It seems too early to say if this is already the end of VMS or
not.
>Instead of bemoaning the past, why not accept that change happens and start off by welcoming someone who has a very hard act to follow?
I disagree, such a change doesn't "happen". Such a change is based on
decisions made by people who are in power. They have reasons to do so
and their reasons are non-technical. There is a collateral damage: the
loss of knowledge, which can lead to the end of VMS. It looks like the
decsion makers were aware of this risk and took it into account.
> The Open Source movement is an example which we should attempt to follow: have an idea, share it, build it, support it, have another idea, ...
OK, so what does that mean for VMS? The Open Source movement is Unix
or Linux based. Even some Unix systems including Linux are open
source. There may be open sources which can be built on VMS, but in
general VMS doesn't support the expected infra structure, which -
again - is Unix based.
VMS is not open source and there is no Open Source movement based on
VMS. Check out the VMS freeware CD and you will see more binaries than
sources. Check out GNV and you will experience its shortcomings. And
as far as I know, recent projects within VMS to make it easier to use
open sources were canceled or discontinued, because of costs.
> For those that feel the need to bash India ...
Not me. The decision was not made in India. India takes whatever they
can to make money. So they are as "civilized" as other western
countries. However, these engineers did not grow up in the VMS
community, they were not selected because of being well known in the
VMS engineering or customer community. They were selected to do a job,
because of the costs.
It may work well for VMS, but it is at least as likely that customers
will turn away from VMS, maybe to the true open source movement.
And, with saving all the costs of the expensive NE engineers, did HP
use the money to hire more Indian engineers? Did HP re-invest that
money into VMS? Convince me, please.
Bill Gunshannon
Yeah, Bangalore. :-) Sorry, the devil made me do it.
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>
Bob Koehler
>> Here is the text of the announcement:
>> ---------
>>
>> From: "McQuaid, Ann" <ann.mcqu...@hpXX.com>
>> Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 18:54:02 +0000
>> Subject: OpenVMS Customer Program =A0Announcement
[...]
>> Sujatha brings rich experience in Sales, Marketing,
That could be a GOOD THING, if she's allowed to use it.
Bob Koehler
>
> Do YOU really think that VMS customers are likely to be impressed by
> someone asserting "development in India works for Microsoft"?
Development in Israel certainly worked for DEC. A significant
portion of the port to Alpha was done by a team in Israel.
Back during the Alpha port days, DEC claimed that VMS engineering was
done as an international effort. I don't think that has changed.
Bob Koehler
>
> OK, so what does that mean for VMS? The Open Source movement is Unix
> or Linux based.
Even FreeVMS is being developed by folks working on Linux, but when
it boot it's not Linux, nor UNIX.
Bill Gunshannon
It's not VMS either.
And, as a matter of fact, having just looked at the latest release, it
looks a lot more like Linux then VMS under the hood.
Peter Weaver
> Some questions remain unanwered:
>
> -What happens to the VMS ambassadors ? Do they still exist, or will they
> be watered down because there is nobody to coordinate communications
> with them ?
Good question. In the past few weeks I received emails from two VMS
Ambassadors announcing that were no longer working for HP Canada. I
wonder how many Ambassadors are left today.
etms...@yahoo.co.uk
I know that there's at least one person on this thread that's recently
become a VMS Ambassador so I doubt that there's any interest in
disposing of the scheme just yet.
I remember Sue talking about Hoff leaving at a presentation she gave
in the UK. At that time, she commented something like, "we've lost
one of the bright lights in VMS Engineering but this means that some
of the lights that have been less bright up to now can have a chance
to shine a little brighter." (Please correct me if that summary of
your comments isn't right Sue).
What I see now is that HP are losing another of their bright lights
but that there's another light that may shine just as bright when
she's had a chance to settle into the role.
I wish Sue all of what she wishes for herself in her future
opportunities and, in fact, replied to Ann's message in that way. I
also hope that the lady that's succeeding Sue (note NOT replacing!)
also does very well. We could all do with a change once in a while
and if Sue gets what she wants from this one then the very best of
luck to her.
Best wishes Sue.
Steve
Peter Weaver
>...
> And that leads neatly back to Sue. I never met Sue but all this
> electrickery stuff means that sometimes you don't need to meet someone
> to get to know them. Thank you Sue for everything you've done for your
If you never had the privilege of being in an audience and hear Sue
start her session with “I LOVE MY JOB!” then you have really missed
out. Watching Sue for an hour was enough to convince anyone that VMS
was still worth betting your business on.
I first saw her in Toronto at an Encompass (DECUS) seminar a few years
back. She handed out a few copies of a book about DEC. When I told her
that my co-worker and good friend Chris Moore really wanted to come
but he was in the hospital having surgery for cancer she was nice
enough to mail him a copy of the book.
JF Mezei
> Instead of bemoaning the past, why not accept that change happens and start
> off by welcoming someone who has a very hard act to follow?
Sue did not become popular and so well loved by just getting a job. She
worked hard and reached out to people, not just those signing million
dollar cheques and built her following. In doing so, she built a lot of
loyalty to VMS which was strong enough to survive the 2 mergers because
people knew Sue and VMS engineers were staying and that it was just a
name change for the owner.
In the end though, HP is a vendor. HP is supposed to thank its
customers, not the other way around.
The new gal may have a totally different way of handling customer
relations or she may try to emulate what Sue did. We don't know. I is up
to her to reach out to the community and present herself and provide
some information on what (if any) we can expect from her.
For all we know, HP has instructed her to only spend time with customers
who spend more than 2.37 million per year. We just don't know.
Customers don't owe anything to HP. They havce a responsability to
provide IT service to their own company and choose the best solution for
their needs and strategies.
There have been many stories of failed or very costly~difficult
migrations from VMS. However, if the image given by HP is that VMS'
remaining active lifetime is limited, then this provides the incentive
to start to plan a migration and do it properly so that it does succeed.
This doesn't happen overnight. But if you foresee the enf of VMS in 2 5
or 10 years, you also start to think about your own migration strategy now.
So the current events may prompt a certain percentage of the remaining
installed base to start looking at migration options.
HP has been good in terms of ensuring existing customers did get support
and has, for 7 years, maintained that VMS would still be developped. And
they aren't going to pull the support as long as it makes them money.
But they can scale down development.
Remember the arguments concucted to justify breaking the plan or record
and not delivering a 8.* version of VAX-VMS. HP can concuct the same
statistics to justify cancelling Alpha-VMS development in the short
term, and later on do the same for IA64.
This is especially important if you believe that IA64 development will
be ended within the next 5 years because at that point, HP will be
looking for excuses to not port VMS beyond IA64. Stating that VMS
customers don't want new features is very easy.
And the sad reality is that as time goes by, an increasing percentage of
the remaining VMS installed base does have that policy. When you have a
VAX that is welded to some manufacturing plan machinery, that machine
stays that way with no upgrades because it does its job.
So, as those who do need new features move on to other OS, what remains
of the VMS installed based is more static and makes it easier for HP to
decide to stop development.
The ball is now in HP's court. It is possible that HP does welcome
speculation on the end of VMS because that will make it easier to start
converting VMS customers over to other HP products.
Or Perhaps HP just doesn't care or don't believe there will be any
speculation.
Or Perhaps the new gal will be just as active as Sue and work very hard
to build relationships and gain trust of customers. And perhaps the
indian division, wanting to prove that they are capable, will deliver
VMS versions faster and with more improvements. Perhaps not. We don't know.
But right now, it is as if we had been submitted through a new merger,
and we must wait to see what the new people will say and do.
Lack of information and action on HP's part will basically confirm HP's
intentions to slowly wind down VMS and try to retain customer by moving
them to HP-UX.
etms...@yahoo.co.uk
>
> Lack of information and action on HP's part will basically confirm HP's
> intentions to slowly wind down VMS and try to retain customer by moving
> them to HP-UX.
>
Would someone like to explain why HP should be giving more information
here??
Because of the high regard that Sue is held in, Ann McQuaid has been
kind enough to take Sue's list and let them know what Sue is moving
from her present role. I don't remember seeing that done for anybody
else in VMS Engineering. From the presentation that Ann McQuaid gave
in the UK to celebrate VMS's 30th Birthday, it looks to me like
they're still putting the money and resources into VMS it's just the
method of doing business at HP, like everywhere else, has developed.
Anonymous
moving to India. All of it. Well, not quite all. A dozen
or so will remain to interface between VMS Engineering of
India and HP US. The hardware that once resided in ZK03 is
already on the way to India, if it's not already there. Soon
the axe will swing. All of VMS Engineering except for those
dozen will be gone (well, I hear there are some openings in
Bangalore for them). Sue probably knows this, so she decided
to leave on her own terms, rather than HP's terms.
Of course this will fail. Not because Indians are dumb or
incapable or anything, but the act of eliminating and
replacing every VMS engineer will destroy the collective
knowledge and (remaining) corporate culture that helps define
VMS. The Indians will be unlikely to pick it up. Plus you
are replacing people often with decades of experience with
people with a bunch of training courses plus their college
work, which probably doesn't include VMS. It would fail just
as badly if HP moved VMS Engineering to Palo Alto, and didn't
allow existing VMS to transfer.
It's probably intended to fail. Probably because of NIH, but
who knows. Unfortunately, no company that would be a good
buyer of VMS really knows its value, or if they do, they know
HP has damaged it enough so that it's not worth buying. That
is, if HP would sell it.
We've already seen the roadmap scaled back. V8.4 delayed.
After V8.4, it will go into maintenance mode. There probably
won't be a V8.5. There definitely won't be a V8.6. Nor will
there be a V9.0. Sorry, JF, ZK03 didn't have a basement.
VMS, it's been nice to know you.
Michael Unger
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Doesn't seem to be very serious ...
> As JF has speculated, [...]
Michael
--
Real names enhance the probability of getting real answers.
My e-mail account at DECUS Munich is no longer valid.
Volker Halle
don't discredit the previous post solely due to it's anonymous nature.
There sometimes are tiny facts, which may support some of that
information:
Didn't you wonder about the rush of released OpenVMS patches in early
April ? Some of them with images from AUG-2008 ? The VAXMSCP01_073
patch for a problem, that had been solved in 2001 ! It really looked
like someone was cleaning up...
The week of 5-JUN-2009 is supposed to be the release date for the next
round of UPDATE patches. It's thursday now, will you believe those
patches to show up tomorrow ?
The future will tell about the truth in this...
Volker.
ja
> > The end of an era yes. The end of VMS - No.
>
> The end of an era, that's obvious. For anything else, the future will
> tell. It seems too early to say if this is already the end of VMS or
> not.
>
> >Instead of bemoaning the past, why not accept that change happens and start off by welcoming someone who has a very hard act to follow?
>
> I disagree, such a change doesn't "happen". Such a change is based on
> decisions made by people who are in power. They have reasons to do so
> and their reasons are non-technical. There is a collateral damage: the
> loss of knowledge, which can lead to the end of VMS. It looks like the
> decsion makers were aware of this risk and took it into account.
>
Ah yes, the "others" again, those horrible people in power. Lovely
attitude leading to the demise of all initiative and the belief that
we are free individuals in a democratic world. The current mess in
the world was also caused by those horrible people in power? Perhaps
not quite, as most of us enjoyed the fruits of economic growth while
it lasted.
> > The Open Source movement is an example which we should attempt to follow: have an idea, share it, build it, support it, have another idea, ...
>
> OK, so what does that mean for VMS? The Open Source movement is Unix
> or Linux based. Even some Unix systems including Linux are open
> source. There may be open sources which can be built on VMS, but in
> general VMS doesn't support the expected infra structure, which -
> again - is Unix based.
>
I was not aware the Open Source is UNIX or Linux based. I am sure that
is true for the Open Source versions of those products, but certainly
not for software which runs on them and others too.
Open Source also means that those that are willing may do something
about shortcomings they perceive, and OpenVMS had and has plenty of
them - one of the reasons for its demise which, after all, did start a
rather long time ago.
The hard part is that the initiative has to come from oneself and not
those people in power.
> VMS is not open source and there is no Open Source movement based on
> VMS.
So, how come nobody got up and did something about it?
>Check out the VMS freeware CD and you will see more binaries than
> sources. Check out GNV and you will experience its shortcomings. And
> as far as I know, recent projects within VMS to make it easier to use
> open sources were canceled or discontinued, because of costs.
>
> > For those that feel the need to bash India ...
>
> Not me. The decision was not made in India. India takes whatever they
> can to make money. So they are as "civilized" as other western
> countries. However, these engineers did not grow up in the VMS
> community, they were not selected because of being well known in the
> VMS engineering or customer community. They were selected to do a job,
> because of the costs.
>
> It may work well for VMS, but it is at least as likely that customers
> will turn away from VMS, maybe to the true open source movement.
>
Open Source is Open Source, there are not multiple flavors of false
and true here. What counts is the motivation, energy, creativity and
general innovation which is taking place. OpenVMS missed out on this a
long time ago, unfortunately.
> And, with saving all the costs of the expensive NE engineers, did HP
> use the money to hire more Indian engineers? Did HP re-invest that
> money into VMS? Convince me, please.
Why should HP invest in something today which very few people want,
bearing in mind that our so-called civilized society is more
interested in short-term profit than much else?
Please do not start the mantra about lack of marketing, lack of senior
management support, lack of ...
There is no convincing to be done if you are not prepared to accept
the fact that life moves on and OpenVMS is simply part of that -
evolutionary- process.
IanMiller
Note there is some OpenSource activity on VMS - e.g. zeromq 0.6
http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=09/04/09/1259967
and the related work on amqp
Tore Sinding Bekkedal
> It's probably intended to fail. Probably because of NIH, but
> who knows. Unfortunately, no company that would be a good
> buyer of VMS really knows its value, or if they do, they know
> HP has damaged it enough so that it's not worth buying. That
> is, if HP would sell it.
I largely agree with your post.
IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
source it.
Allow people to write a port to IA32 hardware, with the original
designers controlling the design, so that curious, proto-geek
teenagers who don't have Itanium hardware lying around their room are
exposed to the system. Counting on people finding VAXstations in
dumpsters - which was my introduction to VMS - doesn't scale all that
well.
In the golden era of VMS, most people were first exposed to VMS
through timesharing systems. VMS has now due to its excellent design
eked out a commercial niche in ultra-high-availability systems and
legacy systems, but due to its nature as a back-room operating system
_nobody really knows about it_, much like z/OS. VMS now mainly runs
those types of services that you only notice when they fail.
It's not really a commercial problem for HP until customers start
dropping VMS because it's "weird and obscure", "only runs on crazy-
expensive hardware" and/or "we can't get anyone who knows how to work
it", which I suspect is happening and has been happening for a while.
Basically, people only run VMS when they positively have to because
other OSes simply can't do what they need.
If HP doesn't care about VMS's future, like it seems the situation is
at the moment, then they might as well open-source it before it dies
out completely.
What they gain in the short term by tying the software with a monopoly
in these niches to hardware with a high profit margin, they will
probably lose in the longer term when the marketplace brings forth a
less unacceptable solution, probably kludged together on top of Linux.
My two cents...
-Tore :)
Tore Sinding Bekkedal
Koehler) wrote:
> In article <6ce941ff-d598-4daf-81ac-8435a09e0...@t10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>, johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk writes:
>
>
>
> > Do YOU really think that VMS customers are likely to be impressed by
> > someone asserting "development in India works for Microsoft"?
>
> Development in Israel certainly worked for DEC. A significant
> portion of the port to Alpha was done by a team in Israel.
>
> Back during the Alpha port days, DEC claimed that VMS engineering was
> done as an international effort. I don't think that has changed.
But I'm guessing that that was because smart, knowledgeable people
existed in Israel and Sweden and the other places - not because
discount people existed there, which is what I think is happening
here. The motives are very different, as will probably the results be.
Besides, hardware and software are very different things. I think that
software development is dependant on esprit d'corps and culture to a
great degree whereas hardware work may be less so. In my humble
opinion, you can't learn some of the most important aspects of
software development in a university. Perhaps I'm biased. Some of the
very worst programmers I've seen have degrees from good universities,
and some of the very best have barely made it past grade school.
-Tore :)
Tore Sinding Bekkedal
> Just got an email from Ann McQ. Sue is leaving the VMS group after 15
> years. Not sure if she's leaving HP or not. A replacement has been
> named.
BTW, I just thought it an interesting point: It probably speaks to the
position that Sue holds in the VMS community, that a thread discussing
Sue leaving has quickly turned into a conversation which is in essence
eulogizing VMS.
-Tore
Neil Rieck
is food for thought:
quote: The current law, Obama said, “says you should pay lower taxes
if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in
Buffalo, New York. “
http://logikalblog.com/2009/05/04/the-first-official-ax-falls-on-off-shoring/
And as someone else has already pointed out in a previous post, moving
work to another HP division outside of the US is not considered
outsourcing (but is is considered off-shoring) so consider this: The
US is going deep into debt. With many "jobs" being off-shored, how
will the US ever recover this money?
IMHO, the only solution is to put an end to certain forms of
globalization. They will probably give tax incentives to companies who
move jobs back to the United States. They will probably increase
corporate taxes on companies who do not.
NSR
johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk
DEC did hardware (chips) and software in Israel, as you say and as Bob
Koehler said earlier, because there were smart people there.
Motorola pioneered software development in India with their cellular
handset stuff, not because India was cheap but (according to those who
were there [1]) because there were smart people there AND they were
willing to adopt new software management processes. These things
matter if you want to ship bug-free handsets quickly by the million,
which Motorola back then thought might give them an edge over Nokia.
Others followed to India after Motorola's apparent success but mostly
forgot about quality and focused on cost reduction. We can form our
own judgements about why Microsoft may have staff in India (it
certainly wouldn't just be to do with MS wanting to sell stuff to the
Indian government, would it).
Motorola's focus on quality and their apparent success back then
didn't really do them much good in today's handset market (fourth
place, behind Nokia, Samsung and LG, and with the parent hoping to
sell off the handset company).
Same goes for VMS in this century's IT market; with a limited number
of exceptions which are often not well known, hype and trendiness
trumps quality, even though most of what people buy this year
(hardware and software) is often barely capable of doing the job
reliably and will usually need to be thrown away in three to five
years, sometimes less. That wasn't the Olsen or DEC or VMS way, but it
has turned out to be the market majority way - maybe because there's
no financially-viable ecosystem in building an allegedly expensive
system and OS and applications, whose incrementally-upgraded lifetime
is measured in decades, but there's a worthwhile profit stream in
selling cheap to buy setups which need replacing top to bottom every
few years, which is the model the Wintel world has been persuaded to
accept.
There's room for more than one kind of delivery truck on the market.
Why isn't there room for more than one kind of IT supplier?
[1] http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2000/nf00301b.htm
and many many others
VAXman-
>On May 7, 2:31=A0pm, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob
>Koehler) wrote:
>> In article <6ce941ff-d598-4daf-81ac-8435a09e0...@t10g2000vbg.googlegroups=
>..com>, johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk writes:
>>
>>
>>
>> > Do YOU really think that VMS customers are likely to be impressed by
>> > someone asserting "development in India works for Microsoft"?
>>
>> =A0 =A0portion of the port to Alpha was done by a team in Israel.
>>
>> =A0 =A0Back during the Alpha port days, DEC claimed that VMS engineering =
>was
>> =A0 =A0done as an international effort. =A0I don't think that has changed=
>..
>
>But I'm guessing that that was because smart, knowledgeable people
>existed in Israel and Sweden and the other places - not because
>discount people existed there, which is what I think is happening
>here. The motives are very different, as will probably the results be.
A few years back, I was supporting a company's VMS product. It was primarily
written in C with a smattering of some Macro and DCL. Support was taken from
me and sent to India where this company's rep said they had a very knowledge-
able group of programmers. About three months after the contract was pulled
from me, I recieved a call from one of these knowledgeable Indian programmers.
He wanted help getting the product to build on his WEENDOZE PeeCee. Needless
to say, this product and this company no longer exist.
>Besides, hardware and software are very different things. I think that
>software development is dependant on esprit d'corps and culture to a
>great degree whereas hardware work may be less so. In my humble
>opinion, you can't learn some of the most important aspects of
>software development in a university. Perhaps I'm biased. Some of the
>very worst programmers I've seen have degrees from good universities,
>and some of the very best have barely made it past grade school.
Years of insight and know-how have been tossed to the wind.
Bob Koehler
>
> And, as a matter of fact, having just looked at the latest release, it
> looks a lot more like Linux then VMS under the hood.
IMHO it looks too much like Linux under the hood. It think they
did "boot and execute a copy command", but without an RMS.
Meanwhile I've just got the latest version of bochs running on
my Alpha but it won't boot the FreeVMS images I downloaded. Yet.
Bob Koehler
>
> BTW, I just thought it an interesting point: It probably speaks to the
> position that Sue holds in the VMS community, that a thread discussing
> Sue leaving has quickly turned into a conversation which is in essence
> eulogizing VMS.
You sound too much like Gartner to me. We hear this every time
anyone leaves VMS Engineering. Turnover is normal. I, too, will
miss Sue, but I'm not ready to beleive that VMS is down one all
critical person.
Richard B. Gilbert
If Olson and company had figured out a way to do it a little more
economically, things might be very different. As it was, DEC priced
themselves right out of the market. The rot may have set in years
earlier but it could plainly be seen in DEC's refusal/failure to compete
in the workstation market during the mid to late 1980s. Sun
Microsystems could and did sell workstations and the Solaris O/S for a
small fraction of what DEC was asking for their hardware and O/S. Guess
who won!!!!!
Back in the 1990's there were something like 20 models of the same size
DEC disks! The difference between them was the mounting hardware! The
advent of StorageWorks fixed that but was a little late.
Markups of 2000 percent or more were routine at Digital. DEC wanted
$700 for a set of memory chips that could be had on the open market for
$30. (DEC Rainbow) They sold a 20 MB disk for $2200 that could be
purchased elsewhere for $300. I purchased both memory chips and disk
elsewhere. So did too many other people.
It couldn't last and, of course, it didn't!
JF Mezei
> BTW, I just thought it an interesting point: It probably speaks to the
> position that Sue holds in the VMS community, that a thread discussing
> Sue leaving has quickly turned into a conversation which is in essence
> eulogizing VMS.
VMS employees who are still with HP are gagged and cannot openly discuss
what is really happening. Unless they have another job already, they
cannot afford to jeoperdize their relationship with HP because they may
want a recommendation instead of being fired for having spoken out.
Shortly after the news was annouced to VMS engineers on the first week
of January, one of them posted something to that effect on C.O.V. (they
had gotten strict guidance on what they can't say and that anything had
to come from HP PR.
And while the letter was signed by Ann McQuaid, I strongly suspect it
was written or vetted by HP's PR department. They knew the news would
leak out that week and did a pre-emptive measure to twist it into some
benign happening.
HP's plan was to emulate one of the star trek episodes where the real
engineers disapear without a noise and are replaced by different people,
hopping nobody will notice the change.
We don't know how many engineers have left since January already because
they have kept quiet (or are still busy tiying off loose ends and giving
their replacement the 2 weeks of training).
Someone did manage to force HP to release the letter about Sue. It is a
shame that HP hasn't done the same for every engineer it is laying off
because in the end, they are all our heros who have managed to build
such a great quality operating system.
JF Mezei
> You sound too much like Gartner to me. We hear this every time
> anyone leaves VMS Engineering. Turnover is normal. I, too, will
> miss Sue, but I'm not ready to beleive that VMS is down one all
> critical person.
You (and HP) underestimate Sue quite a bit.
I met Sue once. (same time as Peter Weaver). As many know here, I have
been a sceptic for many years. I came in to that presentation with my
normal "VMS is dwindling down to oblivion" mentality, and Sue managed to
turn my attitude around with her presentation and give me a positive
attitude, hope and renewed energy. I bought 2 alphas after that ! (OK, I
got one for free from Island :-)
(Of course, some of you may remember HOW she managed to convince me to
change my attitude: http://www.vaxination.ca/vms/decus/web/100_0194.jpg
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
Now, multiply this with every person that Sue has met and given
presentations to, every customer she has helped over the phone or email
because a local office was hopeless, every person she put in touch with
an amabasssador, and you come to realise just how many people Sue
convinced to stay with VMS.
Sue wasn't just convincing people to stick with VMS, she gave them the
ammunition necessary to get them to convince their bosses to stay with VMS.
Sue was the face of VMS at a time when neither HP nor Compaq wanted to
talk about VMS. She broke through the HP corporate firewalls and got to
speak to customers. She understood what cutsomers needed to hear from
HP, knew that HP wouldn't say it on its own and went through hoops to
get the message out.
And lets not forget Bootcamp. This wasn't an HP initiative. It was a Sue
initiative. She worked very hard to make it happen. With the demise of
Decus, Bootcamp had become the annual VMS symposium. I was never able to
attend, and I really regret it, but this is something I would have liked
to have done (despite threaths from some engineers to strap me to their
car rooptop like a dead deer and parade me around town :-) :-)
If Sue was able to convince me to switch my attitude towards VMS in a
short presentation, imagine what she could do to normal people during a
few days of Bootcamp.
And I think that the VMS quilt is also proof he Sue love and dedication
to VMS and the VMS community.
What is great about Sue is that she cared about all customers, not just
the ones that generate 2.37 million dollars per year in revenus.
Another important thing about Sue is that she was right smack in the
middle between HP Corporate's lack of interest with VMS, and the
customers who needed to see some signs from HP that VMS was still a good
solution, and she worked very hard within HP's limits to give VMS
customers as much as she could be allowed to give in terms of information.
She was our champion inside HP.
Why is this important ? We all know how well HP has been marketing VMS
in the 7 years (to the day) that HP has had VMS. Were it not for Sue
constantly trying t break through the limitations, imagine what
your opinion of VMS would be these days ?
You might have received invitations to attend web casts about new intel
blades that run windows, but you wouldn't have had engineers travel to
various cities to give presentation to customers and you wouldn't have
had boot camp. Just a few token sessions at the Connect events (as is
the case now).
Now, going forwards, Sue's effects will live on for a little while
because it takes time for her impact on you to wear off. But by
september, if the VMS community is treated by HP marketing the same way
that HP marketing has been treating VMS for the past 7 years, how long
before customers get the hint that VMS isn't a viable platform in the
long term ?
It isn't just Sue the lovable (and loving person) that is leaving. It is
a person whose job functions were rather unique within HP because of the
DIgital legacy. Sue worked for VMS first, HP second. I suspect that new
girl will be working for HP first and just treat VMS as an HP product.
Having said that, there is a chance that once VMS is fully integrated
into HP in terms of management structure, that HP Marketing might take
an interest since there will be a clear line of responsability, not one
that was shared between HP and VMS engineering.
Neil Rieck
[...snip...]
Highlighting JF's previous post:
VMS employees who are still with HP are gagged and cannot openly
discuss
what is really happening. Unless they have another job already, they
cannot afford to jeopardize their relationship with HP because they
may
want a recommendation instead of being fired for having spoken out.
[...snip...]
which is another way to say that the bad news about Sue is just the
beginning
NSR
Arne Vajhøj
> On May 7, 10:03 am, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>> Right now, India has an image of low quality low cost work. It isn't
>> because of the people, it is because what their clients tell them what
>> to do.
>
> Note that a lot of software work has been done in India and other
> countries for years - this is true for most operating systems you know
> of.
> Do you really think MS Windows is developed in Redmond?
MS has a development center in Hyderabad, but the also bring
thousands to the US on H1B. I would say that MS is a global
company and their software development is global as well.
BTW, did you intend to propose Windows as being high
quality?
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
> On 2009-05-07 17:52, "Anonymous" wrote:
> | Comments: This message did not originate from the Sender address
> | above. It was remailed automatically by anonymizing remailer
> | software. Please report problems or inappropriate use to the remailer
> | administrator at <ad...@nymu.eu>.
> | Path: uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!news.swapon.de!eternal-september.org!
> | feeder.motzarella.org!motzarella.org!mail2news.nymu.eu
>
> Doesn't seem to be very serious ...
Or extremely serious.
If the sender chose to cover the trails due to working for HP.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
> VMS employees who are still with HP are gagged and cannot openly discuss
> what is really happening. Unless they have another job already, they
> cannot afford to jeoperdize their relationship with HP because they may
> want a recommendation instead of being fired for having spoken out.
>
> Shortly after the news was annouced to VMS engineers on the first week
> of January, one of them posted something to that effect on C.O.V. (they
> had gotten strict guidance on what they can't say and that anything had
> to come from HP PR.
That is not a HP specific thing.
Big companies does business that way.
For good reasons.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
People leaving and other people coming in is perfectly normal.
The key question is whether the inflow matches the outflow in
quantity and quality.
When did we last hear about a known person joining VMS
engineering?
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
> IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
> source it.
>
> Allow people to write a port to IA32 hardware, with the original
> designers controlling the design, so that curious, proto-geek
> teenagers who don't have Itanium hardware lying around their room are
> exposed to the system.
There are plenty of open source successes. But there are even
more open source failures.
The model by open sourcing something to save it is far from
a guaranteed success.
SUN found out the hard way.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
>> The end of an era yes. The end of VMS - No.
>
> The end of an era, that's obvious. For anything else, the future will
> tell. It seems too early to say if this is already the end of VMS or
> not.
What happen with VMS will primarily depend on one thing: how
much HP will sell of VMS HW, SW and services.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
> Instead of bemoaning the past, why not accept that change happens and
> start off by welcoming someone who has a very hard act to follow?
> We should treat this change as an opportunity to regroup and look to
> the future. If half of what you say about OpenVMS is true, then why
> are so many of you so negative and sitting on your behinds instead of
> getting together?
>
> The Open Source movement is an example which we should attempt to
> follow: have an idea, share it, build it, support it, have another
> idea, ...
The majority of VMS people seems to prefer to complain
over Digital/Compaq/HP than to actually write some open source code
for VMS.
Arne
Richard B. Gilbert
I don't think I've ever known anyone who joined VMS Engineering before
they joined. In twenty-five years, give or take a couple, I've learned
the names and sometimes e-mail and/or phone numbers of people in VMS
Engineering and/or TCP/IP Engineering (don't know if that's a separate
organization or not). Also a bunch of support people.
From Paul Anderson to Karol Zielonko I have 109 "Digits" or former
"Digits" in my electronic Rolodex. Some I've met face to face, some
I've spoken with on the telephone and some are just names I've collected
over the years.
Arne Vajhøj
> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> Bob Koehler wrote:
>>> In article
>>> <3bfb4642-1366-4303...@z19g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>,
>>> Tore Sinding Bekkedal <tor...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> BTW, I just thought it an interesting point: It probably speaks to the
>>>> position that Sue holds in the VMS community, that a thread discussing
>>>> Sue leaving has quickly turned into a conversation which is in essence
>>>> eulogizing VMS.
>>>
>>> You sound too much like Gartner to me. We hear this every time
>>> anyone leaves VMS Engineering. Turnover is normal. I, too, will
>>> miss Sue, but I'm not ready to beleive that VMS is down one all
>>> critical person.
>>
>> People leaving and other people coming in is perfectly normal.
>>
>> The key question is whether the inflow matches the outflow in
>> quantity and quality.
>>
>> When did we last hear about a known person joining VMS
>> engineering?
>
> they joined.
I believe John Malmberg was know at c.o.v/I-V before he joined whatever
the company was known as at that particular time.
I am sure there must have been others back in the old days.
A growing technology organization can usually not entirely
find senior staff internally but have to head hunt outside
the company.
Arne
Michael Kraemer
> The majority of VMS people seems to prefer to complain
> over Digital/Compaq/HP than to actually write some open source code
> for VMS.
That's something which amazes me too.
Threads like that UFS one or whether Unix
processes should rather be called threads
are about as (ir)relevant as the medieval
discussion on how many angels will fit
on a needle's tip.
The same amount of energy would better be
spent for open source development.
This is not HP's job.
Michael Kraemer
>
> The model by open sourcing something to save it is far from
> a guaranteed success.
>
> SUN found out the hard way.
I don't see how Sun's failure is connected to
open sourcing Solaris. Their hardware business tanked,
and I have the impression they lost their overall focus.
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
> In article <ec083053-09c2-4086...@z19g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>, mw4...@mucweb.de writes:
> >
> > OK, so what does that mean for VMS? The Open Source movement is Unix
> > or Linux based.
>
> Even FreeVMS is being developed by folks working on Linux, but when
> it boot it's not Linux, nor UNIX.
When will I be able to boot FreeVMS and have equivalent functionality to
VMS?
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
<209be860-6d02-48fa...@x6g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>, Tore
Sinding Bekkedal <tor...@gmail.com> writes:
> IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
> source it.
That will kill it off.
> Allow people to write a port to IA32 hardware, with the original
> designers controlling the design,
Who will pay them?
> My two cents...
You need to pay them more than two cents, assuming that you even have
the possibility to do so.
JF Mezei
>
> The same amount of energy would better be
> spent for open source development.
> This is not HP's job.
There is not much motivation to build stuff on VMS if you don't have
confidence trhat VMS will continue to be developped.
Building something like Mozilla on VMS requires a LOT of tools and
a lot of time. If all those tools came pre-installed on VMS, it might
help with ports to VMS.
JKB
Re: Sue leaving the VMS eng. group,
Arne Vajhøj ?crivait dans comp.os.vms :
Main problem comes from OpenVMS itself. Some open source projects
are written with Unix/Posix specifications, not with VMS one even VMS is
POSIX. HP propose a porting library and GNV. I don't know if you have
tested GNV and this porting library, but both are unusable :
1/ gcc frontend calls CC backend and you have to modify all GNU
configure scripts that hang when they try to test gcc/cpp configuration.
Some system include files are broken;
2/ you only can to build pure C sources. When you try to build POSIX
sources, you have to install porting library (sources and binaries,
because include files are not in binary archive). Source is A1 release,
binary is A9... They are some bugs in this porting lib (u_char, u_short
and u_long aren't defined !);
3/ VMS isn't available on amd64 arch.
If someone can use VMS at home on a regular PC, with a rock solid
POSIX emulation (with or without porting lib) and a usable GNV, you
should see that you shall able to use a lot of open source codes.
For example, I write some open source codes (language to scientific
applications and some other stuffs). These codes can be build on all Unix
systems I have tried (*BSD, Solaris, Linux...), but it cannot be build on
VMS even with porting lib. I have not time to investigate, but if all POSIX
compliant open source codes can be built with only minor modifications,
all major open source projects could be proposed with an OpenVMS port.
Regards,
JKB
JKB
Re: Sue leaving the VMS eng. group,
When kernel shall be stable enough. But your help is welcome ;-)
JKB
--
Le cerveau, c'est un véritable scandale écologique. Il représente 2% de notre
masse corporelle, mais disperse à lui seul 25% de l'énergie que nous
consommons tous les jours.
JKB
Re: Sue leaving the VMS eng. group,
> Arne Vajhøj schrieb:
Solaris (SunOS) is stable, but it is not a good operating system due
to a lot of bugs (security, kernel panics, bugs not fixed, very strange patches
policy...). I use it since 1993 and I have seen some SunOS releases and
some incompatibilities :
- SunOS 4.1 (BSD) -> SunOS 2.5 (SysV / init)
- SunOS 2.5 -> SunOS 2.10 (SysV without regular init)
...
Today, Solaris administration is very hard and you have to play with
LD_PRELOAD to avoid some applications strange bugs (mutexes deadlock in
libmalloc, but you can try with libumem, or libbsdmalloc, or
libmtmalloc, or some other lib that provide malloc()/free()
mechanism...). All system configurations differ between two adjacent
release... and it is easier (and more reliable) to run sparc hardware with
linux than with Solaris. If Sun have kept a closed source Solaris,
Solaris was dead.
Sparc arch is a very good architecture, but this hardware business
has tanked because Solaris OS is not very goodi, because sparc harware
was expensive (and too expensive) and because sparc doesn't
officialy support Linux/sparc that runs better on sparc hardware that
solaris (!).
JKB
Re: Sue leaving the VMS eng. group,
><209be860-6d02-48fa...@x6g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>, Tore
> Sinding Bekkedal <tor...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
>> source it.
>
> That will kill it off.
Why ?
>> Allow people to write a port to IA32 hardware, with the original
>> designers controlling the design,
>
> Who will pay them?
It's not the problem. Today, you cannot buy any OpenVMS
workstration, only rackable server (same thing for sparc hardware).
Today, there is no choice. If OpenVMS cannot run on workstations or
cheap computers like regular PC's, it shall dead at short term because
nobody shall be able to see it. Don't forget that Solaris isn't dead
(yet) because it's available on i386 and amd64.
Neil Rieck
> Just got an email from Ann McQ. Sue is leaving the VMS group after 15
> years. Not sure if she's leaving HP or not. A replacement has been
> named.
I was on vacation this week so was not monitoring my business email. I
just noticed this email from ENCOMPASS which indicates that Sue
appears to be leaving HP on June 5.
###
From: Skonetski, Susan [mailto:susan.s...@HP.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 4:00 PM
To: VMS...@LISTSERV.ENCOMPASSUS.ORG
Subject: Regarding Ann's email
Dear Friends,
I will be at HP until the close of business June 5th with access to
email through that time. So Dave G on the news group, yes I am still
here.
Sujatha and I will be sending email to everyone for the next several
weeks. Sujatha (female name) was here for several weeks and we got to
know each other.
Warm Regards as always,
Sue
###
Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html
Bob Koehler
> Bob Koehler wrote:
>
>> You sound too much like Gartner to me. We hear this every time
>> anyone leaves VMS Engineering. Turnover is normal. I, too, will
>> miss Sue, but I'm not ready to beleive that VMS is down one all
>> critical person.
>
> You (and HP) underestimate Sue quite a bit.
>
> I met Sue once.
Sue dseserves all the kudos she's getting. But just because she has
done a great job doe snot mean that I'm willing to rule out someone
new doing a great job.
Bob Koehler
>
> When will I be able to boot FreeVMS and have equivalent functionality to
> VMS?
When you write it? Or a at least contribute?
Bill Gunshannon
Maybe that's because most VMS professionals are just that and actually
have jobs involving real IT environments as opposed to the average
Linux "professional"..........
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>
Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER
>In article <3bfb4642-1366-4303...@z19g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>, Tore Sinding Bekkedal <tor...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> BTW, I just thought it an interesting point: It probably speaks to the
>> position that Sue holds in the VMS community, that a thread discussing
>> Sue leaving has quickly turned into a conversation which is in essence
>> eulogizing VMS.
>
> anyone leaves VMS Engineering. Turnover is normal. I, too, will
> miss Sue, but I'm not ready to beleive that VMS is down one all
> critical person.
1) You underestimate Sue (and her importance to VMS) by far
2) She isn't leaving alone
Good luck, Sue, we wish you all the best
and thanks for all those years
--
Peter "EPLAN" LANGST�GER
Network and OpenVMS system specialist
E-mail Pe...@LANGSTOeGER.at
A-1030 VIENNA AUSTRIA I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist
Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER
>The majority of VMS people seems to prefer to complain
>over Digital/Compaq/HP than to actually write some open source code
>for VMS.
Probably because they are much more busy now in their company supporting
foreign/unsecure/annoying so-called-operating-systems that they no longer
have time for useful programming for vms (and also have less sleep now).
Remember "one needs 7 times the people supporting M$ than supporting
a real operating system", but usually you don't get that much staff...
Bill Gunshannon
Well, it also isn't the users job to provide the applications needed
for the survival of the OS, either. (How many times does it have to
be said, "It's the applications that sell the system, not the OS.")
If the vendor of the OS is happy with the dearth of applications and
the number of ISV's jumping ship, it certainly isn't up to the users
to bail them out.
Richard B. Gilbert
> In article <gu0lp8$u39$02$1...@news.t-online.com>,
> Michael Kraemer <M.Kr...@gsi.de> writes:
>> Arne Vajh�j schrieb:
>>
>>> The majority of VMS people seems to prefer to complain
>>> over Digital/Compaq/HP than to actually write some open source code
>>> for VMS.
>> That's something which amazes me too.
>> Threads like that UFS one or whether Unix
>> processes should rather be called threads
>> are about as (ir)relevant as the medieval
>> discussion on how many angels will fit
>> on a needle's tip.
>> The same amount of energy would better be
>> spent for open source development.
>> This is not HP's job.
>
> Well, it also isn't the users job to provide the applications needed
> for the survival of the OS, either. (How many times does it have to
> be said, "It's the applications that sell the system, not the OS.")
> If the vendor of the OS is happy with the dearth of applications and
> the number of ISV's jumping ship, it certainly isn't up to the users
> to bail them out.
>
> bill
>
There used to be a book about an inch thick listing third party
applications for VMS. My copy has, alas, vanished. I expect that most
of the applications have as well.
Bill Gunshannon
VMS hell... I have a two book set for the PDP-11 that is easily 3" thick.
Actually, I have the VMS one as well but I think it is in the already
packed pile.
I have often wanted to start going thru the PDP-11 Sourcebook to see if
any of those companies could be contacted with an eye towards trying to
salvage some of that old software for posterity. I fear, like most of
the stuff from that era, it is long since lost. :-(
Bill Gunshannon
pe...@langstoeger.at (Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER) writes:
> In article <4a038ea0$0$90276$1472...@news.sunsite.dk>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <ar...@vajhoej.dk> writes:
>>The majority of VMS people seems to prefer to complain
>>over Digital/Compaq/HP than to actually write some open source code
>>for VMS.
>
> Probably because they are much more busy now in their company supporting
> foreign/unsecure/annoying so-called-operating-systems that they no longer
> have time for useful programming for vms (and also have less sleep now).
>
> Remember "one needs 7 times the people supporting M$ than supporting
> a real operating system", but usually you don't get that much staff...
You forgot the smiley. I support 10 times as many MS systems as the
datacenter does VMS systems and do it with 1/5 the manpower. And have
a much better availability record.
And we won't even mention all the Unix Systems I maintain at the same
time.
VAXman-
>In article <4a045b00$1...@news.langstoeger.at>,
> pe...@langstoeger.at (Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER) writes:
>>>The majority of VMS people seems to prefer to complain
>>>over Digital/Compaq/HP than to actually write some open source code
>>>for VMS.
>>
>> Probably because they are much more busy now in their company supporting
>> foreign/unsecure/annoying so-called-operating-systems that they no longer
>> have time for useful programming for vms (and also have less sleep now).
>>
>> Remember "one needs 7 times the people supporting M$ than supporting
>> a real operating system", but usually you don't get that much staff...
>
>datacenter does VMS systems and do it with 1/5 the manpower. And have
>a much better availability record.
I knew that that comment would elicit such a response from you.
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
http://www.quirkfactory.com/popart/asskey/eqn2.png
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"
JF Mezei
> Sue dseserves all the kudos she's getting. But just because she has
> done a great job doe snot mean that I'm willing to rule out someone
> new doing a great job.
This is the logical thing Spock would say.
But we need to factor in emotions here.
HP has not been forthcoming with information. They were not honest with
the reasons for cancelling Bootcamp, and they sat on the news of the VMS
engineering re-org for 5 months already (and they have only fessed up to
the fact that Sue is being replaced, and that is not the whole story).
Yes, it is *possible* that the new VMS engineering will outperform the
old one and come up with more new features and faster than the old one.
But do you really believe that HP would have made this move to improve VMS ?
Lets face it, if HP had made this move to increase VMS engineering
headcount, (hire twice as many with half the salary of what the old ones
were getting), HP would have had no problems bragging about improvements
to VMS engineering. And they wouldn't have prohibited employees from
speaking out on the changes.
And they wouldn't have scaled down the VMS roadmap, they would have
merely delayed certain items to give the new team time to ramp up.
Say you were negotiating a 3 year support contract with HP today.
Wouldn't you want to be told what is REALLY going on ?
The problem here is that even with good intentions, when you bring in a
large group of newbies, no matter what their background is, it takes
time to ramp up to a point where they are confident they can start
changing stuff deep down in the OS. I am sure there are many bits here
and there that are there for a good reason which the newbies don't know
about yet. There is only so much you can transfer from the guy with 25
years experience with the newbie getting 2 weeks of training.
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
<knat...@koenigsberg.fr> writes:
> >> IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
> >> source it.
> >
> > That will kill it off.
>
> Why ?
VMS survives now because a few big customers pay for it. If they stop
doing so, EVEN IF THEY STAY WITH VMS, not enough revenue will be
generated (if any is generated at all) to keep maintenance going, much
less development.
> >> Allow people to write a port to IA32 hardware, with the original
> >> designers controlling the design,
> >
> > Who will pay them?
>
> It's not the problem. Today, you cannot buy any OpenVMS
> workstration, only rackable server (same thing for sparc hardware).
> Today, there is no choice. If OpenVMS cannot run on workstations or
> cheap computers like regular PC's, it shall dead at short term because
> nobody shall be able to see it. Don't forget that Solaris isn't dead
> (yet) because it's available on i386 and amd64.
I too mourn the loss of workstations, but my question is who will pay
the original designers to control the design?
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
I'm not a system programmer (though I have done a bit of system
programming) and don't have the time. I do test and find occasional
bugs in stuff like ZIP and UNZIP and VMSTAR and SMS and Hunter get the
fixes into the official distribution.
Years ago I first read of FreeVMS. The fact that it is not ready now
indicates that it will probably never be ready. It is simply too big a
job.
Bill Gunshannon
VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:
> In article <76j91hF...@mid.individual.net>, bill...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>>In article <4a045b00$1...@news.langstoeger.at>,
>> pe...@langstoeger.at (Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER) writes:
>>> In article <4a038ea0$0$90276$1472...@news.sunsite.dk>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <ar...@vajhoej.dk> writes:
>>>>The majority of VMS people seems to prefer to complain
>>>>over Digital/Compaq/HP than to actually write some open source code
>>>>for VMS.
>>>
>>> Probably because they are much more busy now in their company supporting
>>> foreign/unsecure/annoying so-called-operating-systems that they no longer
>>> have time for useful programming for vms (and also have less sleep now).
>>>
>>> Remember "one needs 7 times the people supporting M$ than supporting
>>> a real operating system", but usually you don't get that much staff...
>>
>>You forgot the smiley. I support 10 times as many MS systems as the
>>datacenter does VMS systems and do it with 1/5 the manpower. And have
>>a much better availability record.
>
> I knew that that comment would elicit such a response from you.
JF Mezei
> VMS survives now because a few big customers pay for it. If they stop
> doing so, EVEN IF THEY STAY WITH VMS, not enough revenue will be
> generated (if any is generated at all) to keep maintenance going, much
> less development.
HP still makes tons of money supporting VAX customers. They will
continue to support Alpha-VMS and IA64-VMS for a very long time.
It is development which is being scaled back. Maybe HP won't have to
guts to announce that VMS is mature and just release one new version of
VMS every 10 years (giving it the ability to still claim VMS is being
developped).
The way I see it, HP is winding down VMS gracefully and very slowly.
This will greatly reduce the loss of customers because there won't be
any single announcemeng big enough to get people to declare "I'll never
buy from HP again" (like happened with the murder of Alpha).
It is not sufficient to look at single events (Like the loss of Sue,
despite this being significant). You need to look at the trend.
Tore Sinding Bekkedal
remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
> In article <slrnh07tak.s3d.knatsc...@rayleigh.systella.fr>, JKB
>
> <knatsc...@koenigsberg.fr> writes:
> > >> IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
> > >> source it.
>
> > > That will kill it off.
>
> > Why ?
>
> VMS survives now because a few big customers pay for it. If they stop
> doing so, EVEN IF THEY STAY WITH VMS, not enough revenue will be
> generated (if any is generated at all) to keep maintenance going, much
> less development.
Get real. A VMS license costs less than a license for Microsoft
Office. HP makes money by making VMS available on hardware with wider
profit margins. Holding features for hostage, you could say. VMS as an
isolated thing is probably running a huge loss, but that's more than
made up for in hardware.
So the only financial loss would be in removing the forced link
between good software and good and expensive hardware, but I suspect
the existing VMS users probably would run Real hardware anyway,
because of the performance and availability requirements. Besides, the
type of people who run VMS nowadays can afford it, and they don't seem
the kind of people who'd risk anything by getting it on the cheap!
> > >> Allow people to write a port to IA32 hardware, with the original
> > >> designers controlling the design,
>
> > > Who will pay them?
Just because the source archive is open doesn't mean that HP cannot
pay the programmers anymore. Realistically, as was the case with
OpenSolaris (although that has a far more questionable place in the
current software world than VMS IMNSHO - it's really Linux but worse),
contributions will (at first, at least) be few and far between, and
the majority of changes were still inside Sun. However, the changes by
volunteers will probably be the ones considered very urgent by those
who write them.
For example, I'm quite certain that a volunteer community would spring
up quite rapidly to begin implementing the changes required for being
able to run VMS on IA32. Apart from those, there will probably be
business as usual in the normal changes.
> I too mourn the loss of workstations, but my question is who will pay
> the original designers to control the design?
Again, that will stay in the hands of HP. If whoever else needs VMS
features they can then hire one of the Original Great Bearded Ones
(there seem to be a few on the job market) to improve it.
PCs are looking more and more like acceptably designed computers once
you run through the checklist of a hundred-odd routines asking
different bits of the machine to leave legacy mode (or even multiple
repetitions of "No, the *new* New Mode, not the previous New Mode",
like on the IA32_64), and I don't think you'd have to munge VMS too
badly to make it run on one.
-Tore :)
Richard B. Gilbert
> On May 8, 11:37 pm, hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
> remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
>> In article <slrnh07tak.s3d.knatsc...@rayleigh.systella.fr>, JKB
>>
>> <knatsc...@koenigsberg.fr> writes:
>>>>> IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
>>>>> source it.
>>>> That will kill it off.
>>> Why ?
>> VMS survives now because a few big customers pay for it. If they stop
>> doing so, EVEN IF THEY STAY WITH VMS, not enough revenue will be
>> generated (if any is generated at all) to keep maintenance going, much
>> less development.
>
> Get real. A VMS license costs less than a license for Microsoft
> Office. HP makes money by making VMS available on hardware with wider
> profit margins. Holding features for hostage, you could say. VMS as an
> isolated thing is probably running a huge loss, but that's more than
> made up for in hardware.
Really? Last time I checked (a long while ago) A VMS License for an
Alphastation 200 sold for around $1600! That's a bit more than
Microsoft gets for "Office". I'd hate to have to pay for a suite of
licenses for one of the big boxes. . . . Was it a GS-160. . . I never
had one, could never have afforded one.
Do you know how much a Solaris license costs?? $0.00!!! That's right,
it's free. You pay for the hardware and you pay for support if you need it.
Arne Vajhøj
> On May 8, 11:37 pm, hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
> remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
>> In article <slrnh07tak.s3d.knatsc...@rayleigh.systella.fr>, JKB
>>
>> <knatsc...@koenigsberg.fr> writes:
>>>>> IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
>>>>> source it.
>>>> That will kill it off.
>>> Why ?
>> VMS survives now because a few big customers pay for it. If they stop
>> doing so, EVEN IF THEY STAY WITH VMS, not enough revenue will be
>> generated (if any is generated at all) to keep maintenance going, much
>> less development.
>
> Get real. A VMS license costs less than a license for Microsoft
> Office.
Really.
We can buy a VMS license for 300 USD today?
That is a lot less than what I remember.
> For example, I'm quite certain that a volunteer community would spring
> up quite rapidly to begin implementing the changes required for being
> able to run VMS on IA32.
Based on the progress for FreeVMS, then I would say no.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
The word is that VMS is 25 MLOC.
Applying COCOMO II on that gives 250000 man months and
195 calendar months.
Some of the code is coming from external and I don't
think COCOMO II is suited for this type of calculation.
But the effort is definitely huge.
It has been estimated that MS spend 50000 man years
(600000 man months) on the Vista development - and
that was just a new version.
Arne
JF Mezei
> Do you know how much a Solaris license costs?? $0.00!!! That's right,
> it's free. You pay for the hardware and you pay for support if you need it.
IF Sue sat down with you, she would be able to convince you that VMS is
cheaper that Solaris, complete with TCO studies etc etc.
If course, is a Sun sales person sat down with you, it would be able to
convince you of the opposite.
But Sue has the uncanny ability to retore faith in a product even when
the person is far far away from being convinced.
And one of the reasons she can do that is that she knows the product,
she knows how customers are using it, she knows about the unreleased
marketing materiual, and she has all the personal contacts to get you
the information that will convince you.
Sue loved her job, loved the engineers (one in paricular may have gotten
more love than others :-), and loved the customers and the community,
and this, while not in MBA books, goes a LONG way whenb the time comes
to make a pitch to promote VMS.
Arne Vajhøj
> In article <slrnh07tak.s...@rayleigh.systella.fr>, JKB
> <knat...@koenigsberg.fr> writes:
>
>>>> IMNSHO, the only way to keep VMS alive in the long term is to open-
>>>> source it.
>>> That will kill it off.
>> Why ?
>
> VMS survives now because a few big customers pay for it. If they stop
> doing so, EVEN IF THEY STAY WITH VMS, not enough revenue will be
> generated (if any is generated at all) to keep maintenance going, much
> less development.
Obviously.
HP runs a business.
But going open source does not mean no support money.
Redhat is a good example of a company living of support
on open source.
I am just very skeptical about whether the same could
be done for OpenVMS.
Arne