Current VMS Usage Survey

[Subcommandante XDelta]

(Was: Re: READ and WRITE vs. SEARCH/OUTPUT)

On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 03:46:45 -0800 (PST), Keith Cayemberg

There are many examples of OpenVMS being used for Real-Time
applications, especially apps that required resources beyond the
capabilities of embedded systems at the time. To my knowledge the
Flight Control System governing the entire North Atlantic airspace and
based in Iceland is still running on OpenVMS. There are also several
radar systems, military communication systems and satellite control
systems running on OpenVMS.

May we assume that some of the VMS userbase, at least, would have
strong opinions about the extinction of VMS if they knew it was on the
drawing board?

Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

So this topic is not about who or what those shops are, but rather what
those shops are using VMS for.

Port the FCS cited above to NSK from VMS, with new generations of
Bohrbugs and Heisenbugs to iron out? - not bloody likely.

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.
The latter figure also is in better agreement
with the estimated $30M of revenue VMS creates.
$15000/a per customer on average seems
more likely than just $300/a (or are support contracts
that cheap these days?)

[Subcommandante XDelta]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.
The latter figure also is in better agreement
with the estimated $30M of revenue VMS creates.
$15000/a per customer on average seems
more likely than just $300/a (or are support contracts
that cheap these days?)

Thank you Michael.

It would be good to have this all disambiguated again and confirmed, for
the sake of strategic discourse (redux).

If there are, putatively, "98,000" systems still running, that are not
current paying customers of HP, how are they running? -As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

[JF Mezei]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
If there are, putatively, "98,000" systems still running, that are not
current paying customers of HP, how are they running? -As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

Yes. License were generally non terminating. But you generally needed
support contracts to get new versions.

At the time when there were about 400,000 systems left, I was informally
told that roughly half were still VAX. And most were still purchasing
software/hardware support contracts.

How that has changed in the last roughly 13 years, I have no idea. I
suspect very few VAX shops migrated to that IA64 contraption. (if they
hadn't upgraded to Alpha, the odds were high that they were boxes
forgotten in a closet that just ran, or higher profile boxes part of
large machinery (such as paper mill automation) that couldn't be changed.

However, the VAX population could only go down as shops upgrade stuff
over time or don't need whatever services the VAX provided.

Alphas/IA64 probably went down faster since 2002 because shops that
could upgrade to Alpha or IA64 are more nimble and can either recompile
tehir own software or their software supplier shifted platforms (such as
SWIFT funds transfer, Cerner for health care and so many others)

[Simon Clubley]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

Well, we now know you have not managed any VMS systems because a VMS
system manager would never need to ask such a question. :-)

Realising that did make me curious to know what your involvement in
VMS was/is.

Are you a customer site programmer or did you work in VMS Engineering ?

Simon.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

Well, we now know you have not managed any VMS systems because a VMS
system manager would never need to ask such a question. :-)

Even I knew the answer to that one!!!

Post by Simon Clubley
Realising that did make me curious to know what your involvement in
VMS was/is.
Are you a customer site programmer or did you work in VMS Engineering ?

Or just a Hobbyist who likes to make waves. :-)

bill

[Subcommandante XDelta]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Simon Clubley

As commercial policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating,
immortal, licence PAKS?

Well, we now know you have not managed any VMS systems because a VMS
system manager would never need to ask such a question. :-)

Even I knew the answer to that one!!!

Post by Simon Clubley
Realising that did make me curious to know what your involvement in
VMS was/is.
Are you a customer site programmer or did you work in VMS Engineering ?

Or just a Hobbyist who likes to make waves. :-)
bill

Dang! my inner NSA analyst has just advised me that I've leaked
contextual identifying data!

No, never been a system manager on the other side of the tracks.

Historically, I was a digit in some capacity.

Neither of the two members of the VLF are from VMS Engineering. That is
logically derivable from what we have not done; I will leave it to the
reader to think that through.

The better half of the VLF, Subcommandante BYPASS, has never been a
digit, not that that admission is giving the game away, it just narrows
down the field to about 4 billion - SMALLNUM.

Subcommandante BYPASS has a deep respect, admiration, and love for VMS
and all things DEC, however.

The above is all you will ever get to know about the VLF, our operations
cannot be compromised. As it stands I have been more conversational than
intended, with comp.os.vms.

The operating plan, was to very occasionally, raise the fist, transmit a
VLF Communique and then fade back into the woodwork. However Gerald
fronting up with his Swedish Vikings, had derailed the operating plan a
little.

Yes, I am a VMS hobbyist, one paradoxically, that does not have a
running VMS installation despite the VLF toolkit, for various reasons.
Though I do plan to build a heterogenous VAX/7.3 AXP/8.4 cluster at some
point in the near future.

You get to an age, you accumulate a portfolio of aches and pains, both
physical and emotional. Sure, there is the wife, the kids and the
grand-children to busy your days, but despite that panoply, you still
want something to give you a challenge, remind you that you are alive,
thus I am a VMS hobbyist.

Necessity dictates wave making of arbitrary amplitude.

Firing up the front end loader, pushing the proverbial up the steep
mountain incline, in futherance of preventing VMSs extinction and
rebooting the VMS ECOlogy.

Everyone needs a hobby.

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
If there are, putatively, "98,000" systems still running, that are not
current paying customers of HP, how are they running? -As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

Yes. The big money is in support.

[Johnny Billquist]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.
The latter figure also is in better agreement
with the estimated $30M of revenue VMS creates.
$15000/a per customer on average seems
more likely than just $300/a (or are support contracts
that cheap these days?)

Thank you Michael.
It would be good to have this all disambiguated again and confirmed, for
the sake of strategic discourse (redux).
If there are, putatively, "98,000" systems still running, that are not
current paying customers of HP, how are they running? -As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

Why are you making the assumption that 1 paying customer == 1 running
system?

Johnny

[Subcommandante XDelta]

Post by Johnny Billquist

Post by Subcommandante XDelta

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.
The latter figure also is in better agreement
with the estimated $30M of revenue VMS creates.
$15000/a per customer on average seems
more likely than just $300/a (or are support contracts
that cheap these days?)

Thank you Michael.
It would be good to have this all disambiguated again and confirmed, for
the sake of strategic discourse (redux).
If there are, putatively, "98,000" systems still running, that are not
current paying customers of HP, how are they running? -As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

Why are you making the assumption that 1 paying customer == 1 running
system?
Johnny

It was an RFC ruse to ferret out a better model. :<D

[Johnny Billquist]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta

Post by Johnny Billquist

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
If there are, putatively, "98,000" systems still running, that are not
current paying customers of HP, how are they running? -As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

Why are you making the assumption that 1 paying customer == 1 running
system?
Johnny

It was an RFC ruse to ferret out a better model. :<D

Excellent strategy for gaining credibility!

Johnny

[Paul Sture]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
It would be good to have this all disambiguated again and confirmed, for
the sake of strategic discourse (redux).
If there are, putatively, "98,000" systems still running, that are not
current paying customers of HP, how are they running? -As commercial
policy did DEC, CPQ and HP sell non-terminating, immortal, licence PAKS?

Yes. This was something which surprised me when I forsook an IBM
mainframe environment for a VMS one. I had seen the detailed list of
software we rented from IBM and realised they could probably make more
money out of that in the long term (remember when DEC was Number 2 to
IBM's Number One?).

It was just a different business model. DEC got the cash up front then
the support fees as well, and this was no different from a couple of
third party software* suppliers we had used in IBM mainframe world.

* database and transaction processing monitor, at circa GBP 20,000
apiece then yearly support at some percentage of that.

[David Froble]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.

But there is such a thing as potential. I'm not saying it will happen,
but, there is the possibility that some people using VMS without a
support contract just might purchase support in the future. There is a
lot more potential for that, than for non-VMS users to be purchasing a
support contract.

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by David Froble
But there is such a thing as potential. I'm not saying it will happen,
but, there is the possibility that some people using VMS without a
support contract just might purchase support in the future.

The question is, why don't they already *have* a support contract?
If they didn't need one in the past, why purchase one now?

Post by David Froble
There is a
lot more potential for that, than for non-VMS users to be purchasing a
support contract.

[V***@SendSpamHere.ORG]

Post by David Froble

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.

But there is such a thing as potential. I'm not saying it will happen,
but, there is the possibility that some people using VMS without a
support contract just might purchase support in the future. There is a
lot more potential for that, than for non-VMS users to be purchasing a
support contract.

I know of 2 LARGE sites with many Alpha systems that *might* have migrated
to Integrity had HP not belied their faith by dismantling VMS engineering
and outsourcing it to India. I also lost a few support opportunities when
clients moved to Integrity because HP tossed them a bone of three years of
support with the purchase. Those 2 LARGE sites might now be on HP support
had HP not repeatedly stabbed VMS in the back and given the knife a twist.

[JF Mezei]

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
I know of 2 LARGE sites with many Alpha systems that *might* have migrated
to Integrity had HP not belied their faith by dismantling VMS engineering
and outsourcing it to India. I also lost a few support opportunities when
clients moved to Integrity because HP tossed them a bone of three years of
support with the purchase. Those 2 LARGE sites might now be on HP support
had HP not repeatedly stabbed VMS in the back and given the knife a twist.

HP placed its bets on that IA64 contraption. And it refused to change it
in the face of not only delays, but also piss poor performance.

If Digital engineers could produce a report showing why IA64 was
technically not going to beat tradictional CPUs, then Intel surely had
similar repport internally and HP too since at the time HP still had
chip engineers. So there woudl have been some other reasons for HP to
stick to that IA64 thing instead of cutting its losses.

HP had the perfect opportunity to ditch IA64 and go Alpha when it bought
Digital/Compaq. Imagine if the amount of resources HP/Intel poured into
IA64 had been put into Alpha ?


The various announcements in 2004 made it clear IA64 wasn't going to
succeed and it was the 8086 that was gonna make it. By 2007, HP was
already paying Intel to keep producing those chips and developing a few
more itenarions on a slow schedule. It was roughly at that time that HP
investigated porting BCS to x86 and decided against it. This is when
Livermore, LaCarly and others started to state unequivoquely that BCS
operating systems would not be ported beyond IA64.

From that point onwards, knowing IA64 was on its last legs, and that BCS
operating systems were dead-ended on IA64, there was no point in HP
continuing to spend megabucks in developoping VMS and HP-UX. So the
dismantlement of VMS engineering was a logical path in executing their plan.

What was dead wrong of HP is the LIES they made about it. Lying to
enterprise customer about the future of a platform is dead wrong. HP
knew very well VMS was dead, as was IA64 yet, it would deny it and keep
on painting blue sky over the future of VMS and IA64.

[David Froble]

One thing to keep in mind is what was going on at those times ....

Post by JF Mezei

Post by V***@SendSpamHere.ORG
I know of 2 LARGE sites with many Alpha systems that *might* have migrated
to Integrity had HP not belied their faith by dismantling VMS engineering
and outsourcing it to India. I also lost a few support opportunities when
clients moved to Integrity because HP tossed them a bone of three years of
support with the purchase. Those 2 LARGE sites might now be on HP support
had HP not repeatedly stabbed VMS in the back and given the knife a twist.

HP placed its bets on that IA64 contraption. And it refused to change it
in the face of not only delays, but also piss poor performance.

HP appears to have had lots of NIH syndrome ...

Post by JF Mezei
If Digital engineers could produce a report showing why IA64 was
technically not going to beat tradictional CPUs, then Intel surely had
similar repport internally and HP too since at the time HP still had
chip engineers. So there woudl have been some other reasons for HP to
stick to that IA64 thing instead of cutting its losses.

Intel stuck with IA-64 because it was their intention to drive it down
everyone's throat. Killing Alpha was part of that scheme. Don't give
anyone any other options. As far as Intel was concerned, how good the
CPU was didn't interest them. Just that it was the only one.

It was AMD that upset Intel's nice monopoly plans. Intel was NOT going
to make a 64 bit x86, and even after Athlon came out, Intel tried to
maintain that position. It was only when they saw that the 800 lb
gorilla was going to starve to death that they made the big "U" turn.
That in turn was the wooden stake through IA-64's heart.

Understand, as long as they had a monopoly, they were going to stick
with IA-64, regardless of whether or not it was a good thing for the
customers. It was planned to be a "good thing" for Intel.

Post by JF Mezei
HP had the perfect opportunity to ditch IA64 and go Alpha when it bought
Digital/Compaq. Imagine if the amount of resources HP/Intel poured into
IA64 had been put into Alpha ?

Well, there can be speculation. Maybe they would have been able to
shrink it, and maybe not. Though if anyone could, it most likely would
have been Intel, if they were willing to make the effort.

But I feel that AMD still would have made the 64 bit x86, and it would
have forced Intel to do the same, and Alpha would have become as
irrelevant as IA-64 has become. And then Intel would have had no more,
and quite likely less incentive to stick with Alpha.

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Post by David Froble
One thing to keep in mind is what was going on at those times ....

(snip)

Post by David Froble
It was AMD that upset Intel's nice monopoly plans. Intel was NOT going
to make a 64 bit x86, and even after Athlon came out, Intel tried to
maintain that position. It was only when they saw that the 800 lb
gorilla was going to starve to death that they made the big "U" turn.
That in turn was the wooden stake through IA-64's heart.
Understand, as long as they had a monopoly, they were going to stick
with IA-64, regardless of whether or not it was a good thing for the
customers. It was planned to be a "good thing" for Intel.

(snip)

Post by David Froble
But I feel that AMD still would have made the 64 bit x86, and it would
have forced Intel to do the same, and Alpha would have become as
irrelevant as IA-64 has become. And then Intel would have had no more,
and quite likely less incentive to stick with Alpha.

As I understand it, it was MS supporting AMD x86-64 that forced intel
to build compatible processors. MS wasn't going to port to another
intel 64 bit architecture. (There were versions of Windows for IA64,
though maybe not new ones.)

-- glen

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by David Froble
One thing to keep in mind is what was going on at those times ....

Post by JF Mezei
HP placed its bets on that IA64 contraption. And it refused to change it
in the face of not only delays, but also piss poor performance.

HP appears to have had lots of NIH syndrome ...

You forget that HP also axed their own PA-RISC chip in
favour of the Itanic. And allegedly there was this study which
predicted they would loose 30% of PA-related revenue in the process.

Post by David Froble
Intel stuck with IA-64 because it was their intention to drive it down
everyone's throat. Killing Alpha was part of that scheme. Don't give
anyone any other options. As far as Intel was concerned, how good the
CPU was didn't interest them. Just that it was the only one.

You forget that almost all of the industry, including even IBM and Sun
had lined up behind the Itanic, whereas Alpha was already on the
way out. Continuing with the former and EOL'ing Alpha was just a
logical decision.

Post by David Froble

Post by JF Mezei
HP had the perfect opportunity to ditch IA64 and go Alpha when it bought
Digital/Compaq. Imagine if the amount of resources HP/Intel poured into
IA64 had been put into Alpha ?

This is just as hypothetical as the question how rich HP would be
if all 2000+x VMS customers would buy super-expensive
hardware support for all 100000 systems out there.

Post by David Froble
Well, there can be speculation. Maybe they would have been able to
shrink it, and maybe not. Though if anyone could, it most likely would
have been Intel, if they were willing to make the effort.

According to that DEC/intel deal in 1997 they were obliged
to produce Alphas. Did they?
The last EV7z Alphas were manufactured by IBM,
and even they allegedly had difficulties with the
next generation EV79, so who would have produced the
later ones?

[JF Mezei]

Post by Michael Kraemer
You forget that almost all of the industry, including even IBM and Sun
had lined up behind the Itanic, whereas Alpha was already on the
way out.

"lined up" is a bit too strong. They had been coerced into trialing IA64
in exchange for keeping good prices on x86 chips.

Had HP told Intel to give up before/at Merced, nobody would have
complained about IA64 not making it to market.


As soon as Curly started to date LaCarly, HP could have told Intel to
give up on IA64 and that it would instead inhering Alpha.

Compaq had already begun to port NSK to Alpha.

Alpha was up and running and competitivce in performance. Under Intel,
it could have become industry standard for servers and high end desktops.

And yeah, when the 8086 grew up to 64 bits, Alpha's server market share
would have shrunk, but just like Power still has a market, Alpha could
have had one with the advantage that it would be multi vendor at the
system level.

And it would have been easier for LaCarly to juystify her folly since it
least she would have been acquiring tech that would give HP and edge and
allow HP to quite the money pit albatros that IA64 was. As it was, HP
was simply removing a competitor in the PC market and not getting any
tech that it would leverage.



Don'.t forget that LaCarly didn't have the votes for her merger with
Curly until the very last minute when she got Bankers Trust to agree to
support her in exchange for whatecver LaCarly promised (or did to the
banker :-)



What is truly amazing in that saga is that CEOs look more at protecting
their personnal turf and golden parachutes rather than maximising the
value of investments they make.

IA64 made sense in the 1990s when HP needed something to compete against
Alpha Power and Sparc. But by 2001, this had changed quite a bit,
expecially with HP getting Alpha and it woudl have gained a lot of
leverage by giving it to Intel.


Note that internally at Intel, a lot of people disagreed with IA64.

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by JF Mezei
"lined up" is a bit too strong. They had been coerced into trialing IA64
in exchange for keeping good prices on x86 chips.

That's wild speculation.
Moreover, *all* major manufacturers had lined up,
and if all of them get discounts, what sense
does this make?

Post by JF Mezei
Had HP told Intel to give up before/at Merced, nobody would have
complained about IA64 not making it to market.

Indeed the right time to give up without loosing face too much
would have been 1997 to 1999. More than three years of development
without first silicon being significantly faster than the
then current RISC chips didn't bode well.
But probably there was still some hope at HP/intel.

Post by JF Mezei
IA64 made sense in the 1990s when HP needed something to compete against
Alpha Power and Sparc.

HP didn't need IA64 to compete performancewise,
PA-RISC did very well against all those three.
The true problem was the limited sales number
vs ever increasing development and manufacturing costs.
Power and Mips had the embedded segment (and the Mac)
to grow beyond the magical 1M chips per year,
PA was on the edge and Alpha was below one order
of magnitude. Teaming up with intel for a new
commodity chip was the natural way out.

Post by JF Mezei
But by 2001, this had changed quite a bit,
expecially with HP getting Alpha and it woudl have gained a lot of
leverage by giving it to Intel.

Totally absurd.
Back in 2001, Itanic had a bright future, 100% industry support,
including M$. Alpha had nothing of that kind, M$ support was
cancelled in 1999 or 2000, iirc.
Going with Alpha would have been entirely irrational.
Just as if they had chosen the 68K.

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by JF Mezei
"lined up" is a bit too strong. They had been coerced into trialing IA64
in exchange for keeping good prices on x86 chips.

That's wild speculation.
Moreover, *all* major manufacturers had lined up,
and if all of them get discounts, what sense
does this make?

Post by JF Mezei
Had HP told Intel to give up before/at Merced, nobody would have
complained about IA64 not making it to market.

Indeed the right time to give up without loosing face too much
would have been 1997 to 1999. More than three years of development
without first silicon being significantly faster than the
then current RISC chips didn't bode well.
But probably there was still some hope at HP/intel.

Post by JF Mezei
IA64 made sense in the 1990s when HP needed something to compete against
Alpha Power and Sparc.

HP didn't need IA64 to compete performancewise,
PA-RISC did very well against all those three.
The true problem was the limited sales number
vs ever increasing development and manufacturing costs.
Power and Mips had the embedded segment (and the Mac)
to grow beyond the magical 1M chips per year,
PA was on the edge and Alpha was below one order
of magnitude. Teaming up with intel for a new
commodity chip was the natural way out.

Post by JF Mezei
But by 2001, this had changed quite a bit,
expecially with HP getting Alpha and it woudl have gained a lot of
leverage by giving it to Intel.

Totally absurd.
Back in 2001, Itanic had a bright future, 100% industry support,
including M$. Alpha had nothing of that kind, M$ support was
cancelled in 1999 or 2000, iirc.
Going with Alpha would have been entirely irrational.
Just as if they had chosen the 68K.

It is not the time to do large historical analysis, perhaps, even if it
is of interest. But, just to say something :

We talk about dead of VMS, and dead of Itanium.

The similiraty between these events is End of Diversity.

Itanium dead for a lot of reasons exposed here, I agree. There is
another factor : our logic in industry now is : impossible to go out a
main stream, when it exists.

Itanium was killed also because it is impossible to go out x86, and out
of the wars around it.

VMS is murdered because the mission critical concept is decadent, and DG
think about mission critical as it could be "on the cloud".

Everything is a windows xx, running on a x86 yy, all of them in "the
clouds".

As we destruct every days bio-species, and every month forget a langage,
we destruct diversity in computer science.

In other words, fighting for VMS is like fighting against End of Forests
: it is fighting for oxygen.

[MG]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
It is not the time to do large historical analysis, perhaps, even if it
We talk about dead of VMS, and dead of Itanium.
The similiraty between these events is End of Diversity.
Itanium dead for a lot of reasons exposed here, I agree. There is
another factor : our logic in industry now is : impossible to go out a
main stream, when it exists.
Itanium was killed also because it is impossible to go out x86, and out
of the wars around it.
VMS is murdered because the mission critical concept is decadent, and DG
think about mission critical as it could be "on the cloud".
Everything is a windows xx, running on a x86 yy, all of them in "the
clouds".
As we destruct every days bio-species, and every month forget a langage,
we destruct diversity in computer science.
In other words, fighting for VMS is like fighting against End of Forests
: it is fighting for oxygen.

Do yourself a big favor, do what I did and simply give up. Have
you not noticed yet? Hardly anyone on here can be bothered with
VMS. The only reason, I assume, that some still do is because
they're still employed with it (and for how long?), are simply
'used to' it, just so happen to run it and don't know much of
anything else to switch easily or find it a fun hobby.

You seem to have your heart in the right place, but it won't be
appreciated here anyway, as you've also noticed so far. (I would
have told you this earlier, but I was away and out of the country
for about 10 days and didn't often have internet at my disposal.)

People like yourself may be possibly vindicated when things like
nuclear reactors start running on Ubuntu, with all of the possible
consequences. Until then, there's no reason to waste any breath
or break a sweat over here, amongst all of these intentionally
dense contrarians, naysayers, usual IT/ICT industry (borderline-)
sociopaths and what-not.

- MG

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by MG

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
It is not the time to do large historical analysis, perhaps, even if it
We talk about dead of VMS, and dead of Itanium.
The similiraty between these events is End of Diversity.
Itanium dead for a lot of reasons exposed here, I agree. There is
another factor : our logic in industry now is : impossible to go out a
main stream, when it exists.
Itanium was killed also because it is impossible to go out x86, and out
of the wars around it.
VMS is murdered because the mission critical concept is decadent, and DG
think about mission critical as it could be "on the cloud".
Everything is a windows xx, running on a x86 yy, all of them in "the
clouds".
As we destruct every days bio-species, and every month forget a langage,
we destruct diversity in computer science.
In other words, fighting for VMS is like fighting against End of Forests
: it is fighting for oxygen.

Do yourself a big favor, do what I did and simply give up. Have
you not noticed yet? Hardly anyone on here can be bothered with
VMS. The only reason, I assume, that some still do is because
they're still employed with it (and for how long?), are simply
'used to' it, just so happen to run it and don't know much of
anything else to switch easily or find it a fun hobby.
You seem to have your heart in the right place, but it won't be
appreciated here anyway, as you've also noticed so far. (I would
have told you this earlier, but I was away and out of the country
for about 10 days and didn't often have internet at my disposal.)
People like yourself may be possibly vindicated when things like
nuclear reactors start running on Ubuntu, with all of the possible
consequences. Until then, there's no reason to waste any breath
or break a sweat over here, amongst all of these intentionally
dense contrarians, naysayers, usual IT/ICT industry (borderline-)
sociopaths and what-not.
- MG

I take it.
Why am I so courageous ?
Have a look here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gleaners
The field is quite erased but it is always opened for gleaners

[j***@gmail.com]

Post by MG

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
It is not the time to do large historical analysis, perhaps, even if it
We talk about dead of VMS, and dead of Itanium.
The similiraty between these events is End of Diversity.
Itanium dead for a lot of reasons exposed here, I agree. There is
another factor : our logic in industry now is : impossible to go out a
main stream, when it exists.
Itanium was killed also because it is impossible to go out x86, and out
of the wars around it.
VMS is murdered because the mission critical concept is decadent, and DG
think about mission critical as it could be "on the cloud".
Everything is a windows xx, running on a x86 yy, all of them in "the
clouds".
As we destruct every days bio-species, and every month forget a langage,
we destruct diversity in computer science.
In other words, fighting for VMS is like fighting against End of Forests
: it is fighting for oxygen.

Do yourself a big favor, do what I did and simply give up. Have
you not noticed yet? Hardly anyone on here can be bothered with
VMS. The only reason, I assume, that some still do is because
they're still employed with it (and for how long?), are simply
'used to' it, just so happen to run it and don't know much of
anything else to switch easily or find it a fun hobby.
You seem to have your heart in the right place, but it won't be
appreciated here anyway, as you've also noticed so far. (I would
have told you this earlier, but I was away and out of the country
for about 10 days and didn't often have internet at my disposal.)
People like yourself may be possibly vindicated when things like
nuclear reactors start running on Ubuntu, with all of the possible
consequences. Until then, there's no reason to waste any breath
or break a sweat over here, amongst all of these intentionally
dense contrarians, naysayers, usual IT/ICT industry (borderline-)
sociopaths and what-not.
- MG

Meanwhile, in other news:

"IBM's System z mainframe running z/OS experienced its fourth consecutive
quarter of growth, increasing revenue 6.3% on year to US$827 million,
representing 6.8% of all server revenues in the third quarter of 2013."
[IDC, via e.g. http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20131205PR203.html]

One size does not fit all, even if the stereotypical IT Department and the rest
of the Certified Microsoft Dependent ecosystem surrounding them think it always
has been and always will be a world of nothing but Window boxes.


"Linux server demand continued to be positively impacted by cloud
infrastructure deployments, as hardware revenues increased at 5.6% on year to
US$3.4 billion in the third quarter of 2013. Linux servers now represent 28% of
all server revenues, up 2.5pp when compared with the third quarter of 2012.


Microsoft Windows server demand was down 1.3% on year in the third quarter of
2013 with quarterly server hardware revenues totaling US$6.1 billion
representing 50.3% of overall quarterly factory revenues, up 1.2 points over
the prior year's quarter.

Unix servers experienced a revenue decline of 31.3% on year to US$1.3 billion
representing 11.1% of quarterly server revenues for the quarter. This was the
lowest quarterly Unix server revenues ever reported by IDC."

I assume a "UNIX server" here is a non-x86 UNIX box (SPARC, Power, IA64, etc).
UNIX is having a hard time here, courtesy of Linux being "good enough" for the
vast majority of cases, and Linux, being open source, avoids the "what happens
if my vendor changes his strategy" nightmare being discussed right here.

I don't know how IDC identify "Windows server demand", given that an x86
server typically ships with no OS, and may end up running Windows, Linux, or
something else (*BSD, maybe?). Never mind.

So, to repeat: one size does not fit all.

HP are not IBM. That is very very clear.

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by j***@gmail.com

Post by MG

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
It is not the time to do large historical analysis, perhaps, even if it
We talk about dead of VMS, and dead of Itanium.
The similiraty between these events is End of Diversity.
Itanium dead for a lot of reasons exposed here, I agree. There is
another factor : our logic in industry now is : impossible to go out a
main stream, when it exists.
Itanium was killed also because it is impossible to go out x86, and out
of the wars around it.
VMS is murdered because the mission critical concept is decadent, and DG
think about mission critical as it could be "on the cloud".
Everything is a windows xx, running on a x86 yy, all of them in "the
clouds".
As we destruct every days bio-species, and every month forget a langage,
we destruct diversity in computer science.
In other words, fighting for VMS is like fighting against End of Forests
: it is fighting for oxygen.

Do yourself a big favor, do what I did and simply give up. Have
you not noticed yet? Hardly anyone on here can be bothered with
VMS. The only reason, I assume, that some still do is because
they're still employed with it (and for how long?), are simply
'used to' it, just so happen to run it and don't know much of
anything else to switch easily or find it a fun hobby.
You seem to have your heart in the right place, but it won't be
appreciated here anyway, as you've also noticed so far. (I would
have told you this earlier, but I was away and out of the country
for about 10 days and didn't often have internet at my disposal.)
People like yourself may be possibly vindicated when things like
nuclear reactors start running on Ubuntu, with all of the possible
consequences. Until then, there's no reason to waste any breath
or break a sweat over here, amongst all of these intentionally
dense contrarians, naysayers, usual IT/ICT industry (borderline-)
sociopaths and what-not.
- MG

"IBM's System z mainframe running z/OS experienced its fourth consecutive
quarter of growth, increasing revenue 6.3% on year to US$827 million,
representing 6.8% of all server revenues in the third quarter of 2013."
[IDC, via e.g. http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20131205PR203.html]
One size does not fit all, even if the stereotypical IT Department and the rest
of the Certified Microsoft Dependent ecosystem surrounding them think it always
has been and always will be a world of nothing but Window boxes.
"Linux server demand continued to be positively impacted by cloud
infrastructure deployments, as hardware revenues increased at 5.6% on year to
US$3.4 billion in the third quarter of 2013. Linux servers now represent 28% of
all server revenues, up 2.5pp when compared with the third quarter of 2012.
Microsoft Windows server demand was down 1.3% on year in the third quarter of
2013 with quarterly server hardware revenues totaling US$6.1 billion
representing 50.3% of overall quarterly factory revenues, up 1.2 points over
the prior year's quarter.
Unix servers experienced a revenue decline of 31.3% on year to US$1.3 billion
representing 11.1% of quarterly server revenues for the quarter. This was the
lowest quarterly Unix server revenues ever reported by IDC."
I assume a "UNIX server" here is a non-x86 UNIX box (SPARC, Power, IA64, etc).
UNIX is having a hard time here, courtesy of Linux being "good enough" for the
vast majority of cases, and Linux, being open source, avoids the "what happens
if my vendor changes his strategy" nightmare being discussed right here.
I don't know how IDC identify "Windows server demand", given that an x86
server typically ships with no OS, and may end up running Windows, Linux, or
something else (*BSD, maybe?). Never mind.
So, to repeat: one size does not fit all.
HP are not IBM. That is very very clear.

Very interesting. I thought about it, without proofs, "HP is not IBM".
Thanks for these elements.

It is like a nightmare : IBM and DEC were first and second, and we, with
DEC thought about us as "the good" and big blue as "the bad", too
hierarchic.
And now, IBM is "professionnal" and we stay in a tie seller. Too bad.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by JF Mezei
"lined up" is a bit too strong. They had been coerced into trialing IA64
in exchange for keeping good prices on x86 chips.

That's wild speculation.
Moreover, *all* major manufacturers had lined up,
and if all of them get discounts, what sense
does this make?

Would you want to try to compete when you were the only one not getting
a discount?

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by JF Mezei
Had HP told Intel to give up before/at Merced, nobody would have
complained about IA64 not making it to market.

Indeed the right time to give up without loosing face too much
would have been 1997 to 1999. More than three years of development
without first silicon being significantly faster than the
then current RISC chips didn't bode well.
But probably there was still some hope at HP/intel.

I doubt there was ever hope. I think it was all the corporate "must save
face" attitude. What I am suprised about is that the stockholders didn't
revolt. The fiction being handed to them must have been a real piece of
work.

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by JF Mezei
IA64 made sense in the 1990s when HP needed something to compete against
Alpha Power and Sparc.

HP didn't need IA64 to compete performancewise,
PA-RISC did very well against all those three.
The true problem was the limited sales number
vs ever increasing development and manufacturing costs.
Power and Mips had the embedded segment (and the Mac)
to grow beyond the magical 1M chips per year,
PA was on the edge and Alpha was below one order
of magnitude. Teaming up with intel for a new
commodity chip was the natural way out.

Post by JF Mezei
But by 2001, this had changed quite a bit,
expecially with HP getting Alpha and it woudl have gained a lot of
leverage by giving it to Intel.

Totally absurd.
Back in 2001, Itanic had a bright future, 100% industry support,

Maybe in the marketing world. I never read anything technical that
would have made me want to use it. Even the "smart compilers" that
were going to be able to modify code based on profiling information
(did anyone ever actually do this?) struck me as a cute but improbable
idea.

Post by Michael Kraemer
including M$. Alpha had nothing of that kind, M$ support was
cancelled in 1999 or 2000, iirc.

I never really understood that. have to wonder if it wasn't at the
request of people outside MS as I saw Alpha machines running Windows
and it worked quite well. I would be very happy if I could get the
OS (it was NT when I saw it, I don't think it went to 2000) to run
on my one remaining Alpha just for fun.

Post by Michael Kraemer
Going with Alpha would have been entirely irrational.
Just as if they had chosen the 68K.

Funny you should mention that as the original plan for the IBM PC was
the M68K, not the 8088.

bill

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Would you want to try to compete when you were the only one not getting
a discount?

Well, firstly I don't buy that story with x86 discounts as the main
reason to adopt the Itanic.
And secondly, even if true, if everybody gets a discount, what's
the difference?

Post by Bill Gunshannon
I doubt there was ever hope. I think it was all the corporate "must save
face" attitude. What I am suprised about is that the stockholders didn't
revolt. The fiction being handed to them must have been a real piece of
work.

At some point there surely was. Of course VLIW/EPIC is a crazy idea,
but at some point, one has to give crazy ideas an opportunity to materialize.
Of course, if they don't materialize after three, not even five years,
one could at least ask some questions.

Another flaw inherent in the Itanic adventure was that intel's and
HP's interests were rather different.
intel didn't desperately need a new chip, they could have continued
forever with x86. Add another 32bits to its address registers
to cope with RAM beyond 4GB, once it becomes affordable.
HP otoh needed a replacement for PA before it would become too
expensive to maintain it.

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
Totally absurd.
Back in 2001, Itanic had a bright future, 100% industry support,

Maybe in the marketing world. I never read anything technical that
would have made me want to use it.

well, you are not "the market".

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Even the "smart compilers" that
were going to be able to modify code based on profiling information
(did anyone ever actually do this?) struck me as a cute but improbable
idea.

Yep, yet another flaw in the Itanic concept.
But it was OK to give it at least a try.

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
including M$. Alpha had nothing of that kind, M$ support was
cancelled in 1999 or 2000, iirc.

I never really understood that. have to wonder if it wasn't at the
request of people outside MS as I saw Alpha machines running Windows
and it worked quite well. I would be very happy if I could get the
OS (it was NT when I saw it, I don't think it went to 2000) to run
on my one remaining Alpha just for fun.

The problem is not whether it runs well or not,
but rather whether if enough people see any sense
in buying a Windoof/Alpha box when a Windoof/intel box
is cheaper, has way more hardware and software support
and doesn't run much slower for most practical purposes.
The sales numbers of those boxes where marginal
within the already marginal sales numbers of Alphas altogether.

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
Going with Alpha would have been entirely irrational.
Just as if they had chosen the 68K.

Funny you should mention that as the original plan for the IBM PC was
the M68K, not the 8088.

The world would be a better place if IBM had made a wiser decision.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Would you want to try to compete when you were the only one not getting
a discount?

Well, firstly I don't buy that story with x86 discounts as the main
reason to adopt the Itanic.
And secondly, even if true, if everybody gets a discount, what's
the difference?

Why is this so hard to see? PC margins are razor thin. If I am the guy
not getting a discount then my PC's are more expensive and I will be the
first man out of the game.

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
I doubt there was ever hope. I think it was all the corporate "must save
face" attitude. What I am suprised about is that the stockholders didn't
revolt. The fiction being handed to them must have been a real piece of
work.

At some point there surely was. Of course VLIW/EPIC is a crazy idea,
but at some point, one has to give crazy ideas an opportunity to materialize.
Of course, if they don't materialize after three, not even five years,
one could at least ask some questions.
Another flaw inherent in the Itanic adventure was that intel's and
HP's interests were rather different.
intel didn't desperately need a new chip, they could have continued
forever with x86. Add another 32bits to its address registers
to cope with RAM beyond 4GB, once it becomes affordable.
HP otoh needed a replacement for PA before it would become too
expensive to maintain it.

Intel had others that have had even more success than Itanium. Like
Arm. :-)

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
Totally absurd.
Back in 2001, Itanic had a bright future, 100% industry support,

Maybe in the marketing world. I never read anything technical that
would have made me want to use it.

well, you are not "the market".

No, I'm not. I'm a techie. (And, no, I am not insulted by the epithet!)

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Even the "smart compilers" that
were going to be able to modify code based on profiling information
(did anyone ever actually do this?) struck me as a cute but improbable
idea.

Yep, yet another flaw in the Itanic concept.
But it was OK to give it at least a try.

Anyone dealing with commercial software would have known from the start
that no company was going to be recompiling custome versions of their
software for every customer. Without that, the feature is meaningless.

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
including M$. Alpha had nothing of that kind, M$ support was
cancelled in 1999 or 2000, iirc.

I never really understood that. have to wonder if it wasn't at the
request of people outside MS as I saw Alpha machines running Windows
and it worked quite well. I would be very happy if I could get the
OS (it was NT when I saw it, I don't think it went to 2000) to run
on my one remaining Alpha just for fun.

The problem is not whether it runs well or not,
but rather whether if enough people see any sense
in buying a Windoof/Alpha box when a Windoof/intel box
is cheaper, has way more hardware and software support
and doesn't run much slower for most practical purposes.
The sales numbers of those boxes where marginal
within the already marginal sales numbers of Alphas altogether.

Yeah, butt he marginal sales may well have been due to the fact that it
got killed before third parties even had a chance to get products out
the door.

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
Going with Alpha would have been entirely irrational.
Just as if they had chosen the 68K.

Funny you should mention that as the original plan for the IBM PC was
the M68K, not the 8088.

The world would be a better place if IBM had made a wiser decision.

Wisdom had nothing to do with it. Ethics (or the lack thereof) did.

bill

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Intel had others that have had even more success than Itanium. Like
Arm. :-)

They never "had" ARM.
Iirc they inherited StrongARM in that 1997 DEC deal,
and that was canned and developers wouldn't work for
intel, see the Alasir pages,
http://alasir.com/articles/alpha_history/dec_collapse.shtml

Post by Bill Gunshannon
No, I'm not. I'm a techie. (And, no, I am not insulted by the epithet!)

Well, in particular techies managed to squeeze out significant
Linpack GFLOPS from this chip.
SGI and even IBM built some supercomputers around it so it
made at least a short-lived appearance in the TOP500.

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Yeah, butt he marginal sales may well have been due to the fact that it
got killed before third parties even had a chance to get products out
the door.

Wrong timeline.
It was 1999
when support and development of NT/Alpha was cancelled by Compaq,
and in retaliation M$ cancelled their server products and said
64bit NT would be Itanic only.
That was the end, full six years after introduction of
Alpha boxes, more than enough time to develop products.
Alpha itself was EOL'ed another two years later.

It has been discussed several times here:
German PC retailer Vobis had Alpha/NT boxes
for sale twice in the 1990s, in the very beginning
and around 1996/97.
They had them on display and mentioned in their
marketing flyers and in the trade press.
Nobody except a few alpha fanatics wanted them,
and I remember a Vobis employee saying that it
was an entirely useless product, no matter at
what price they offered it.

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
The world would be a better place if IBM had made a wiser decision.

Wisdom had nothing to do with it. Ethics (or the lack thereof) did.

I don't remember ethical issues.
The usual story is that the 68K was seen as too new, no second source,
and, as usual, Motorola couldn't deliver enough and in time.
If there were a first price for inapt management,
I would award it to Motorola's, not DEC's.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Intel had others that have had even more success than Itanium. Like
Arm. :-)

They never "had" ARM.

OK, my mistake. I thought I had seen that they were producing ARM CPS's.

Post by Michael Kraemer
Iirc they inherited StrongARM in that 1997 DEC deal,
and that was canned and developers wouldn't work for
intel, see the Alasir pages,
http://alasir.com/articles/alpha_history/dec_collapse.shtml

Isn't StronARM just a different variant of ARM? Like Sparc and ULTRASparc.

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
No, I'm not. I'm a techie. (And, no, I am not insulted by the epithet!)

Well, in particular techies managed to squeeze out significant
Linpack GFLOPS from this chip.
SGI and even IBM built some supercomputers around it so it
made at least a short-lived appearance in the TOP500.

Techie benchmarks may be fun, but they don't pay the mortgage.

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Yeah, butt he marginal sales may well have been due to the fact that it
got killed before third parties even had a chance to get products out
the door.

Wrong timeline.
It was 1999
when support and development of NT/Alpha was cancelled by Compaq,
and in retaliation M$ cancelled their server products and said
64bit NT would be Itanic only.
That was the end, full six years after introduction of
Alpha boxes, more than enough time to develop products.
Alpha itself was EOL'ed another two years later.
German PC retailer Vobis had Alpha/NT boxes
for sale twice in the 1990s, in the very beginning
and around 1996/97.
They had them on display and mentioned in their
marketing flyers and in the trade press.
Nobody except a few alpha fanatics wanted them,

I don't know about that. We had a Physics Professor who bought one
for a grant suported project. He loved it. Ended out putting Linux
on it because he cold not get applications to run under NT on it. I
always figured it was the lack of applications that most likely caused
NT/Alpha's demise. (Where have we heard that before?)

Post by Michael Kraemer
and I remember a Vobis employee saying that it
was an entirely useless product, no matter at
what price they offered it.

Interesting. I think it may have been doing better over here.

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
The world would be a better place if IBM had made a wiser decision.

Wisdom had nothing to do with it. Ethics (or the lack thereof) did.

I don't remember ethical issues.
The usual story is that the 68K was seen as too new, no second source,
and, as usual, Motorola couldn't deliver enough and in time.

The version I heard was a little bit different. It wasn't that
couldn't deliver it was that IBM wanted first dibs. They expected
Motorola to short their other customers in order to meet whatever
IBM's demand was. Motorola, supposedly, was unwilling to do that
to their existing customer base.

Post by Michael Kraemer
If there were a first price for inapt management,
I would award it to Motorola's, not DEC's.

I would award it to Exxon (as regards the Z80 debacle.)

bill

[Simon Clubley]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Intel had others that have had even more success than Itanium. Like
Arm. :-)

They never "had" ARM.

OK, my mistake. I thought I had seen that they were producing ARM CPS's.

Post by Michael Kraemer
Iirc they inherited StrongARM in that 1997 DEC deal,
and that was canned and developers wouldn't work for
intel, see the Alasir pages,
http://alasir.com/articles/alpha_history/dec_collapse.shtml

Isn't StronARM just a different variant of ARM? Like Sparc and ULTRASparc.

The British company which created the ARM architecture has created multiple
versions of that architecture to address specific markets and new
requirements as they emerge.

StrongARM was just one implementation of a specific ARM architecture version.

BTW, if you have not experienced ARM before now, you should have a closer
look at it. It's a clean architecture with a beautifully expressive
assembly language.

Simon.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Intel had others that have had even more success than Itanium. Like
Arm. :-)

They never "had" ARM.

OK, my mistake. I thought I had seen that they were producing ARM CPS's.

Post by Michael Kraemer
Iirc they inherited StrongARM in that 1997 DEC deal,
and that was canned and developers wouldn't work for
intel, see the Alasir pages,
http://alasir.com/articles/alpha_history/dec_collapse.shtml

Isn't StronARM just a different variant of ARM? Like Sparc and ULTRASparc.

The British company which created the ARM architecture has created multiple
versions of that architecture to address specific markets and new
requirements as they emerge.
StrongARM was just one implementation of a specific ARM architecture version.
BTW, if you have not experienced ARM before now, you should have a closer
look at it. It's a clean architecture with a beautifully expressive
assembly language.

I have a few RaspberryPi's. All I need now is the time to play with them.

bill

[Stephen Hoffman]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer

Intel had others that have had even more success than Itanium. Like Arm. :-)

They never "had" ARM.

OK, my mistake. I thought I had seen that they were producing ARM CPS's.

Intel produced a number of ARM CPUs, under both the XScale and
StrongARM names. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM>
<http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1174114>
<http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1266052>

Paul Otellini publicly stated Intel possessed an ARM Architecture
License a while back (and still has at least a process license, per
<http://www.arm.com/products/processors/licensees.php>, and that's
likely not a complete list of licensees), and Microsoft also reportedly
has an ARM Architecture license. (The ARM Architecture license allows
the holder to produce their own custom chips based on the ARM
architecture <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture>. There's
also a processor core license, which allows integrating an existing
core design.)

[Sprag]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
German PC retailer Vobis had Alpha/NT boxes
for sale twice in the 1990s, in the very beginning
and around 1996/97.
They had them on display and mentioned in their
marketing flyers and in the trade press.
Nobody except a few alpha fanatics wanted them,

I don't know about that. We had a Physics Professor who bought one
for a grant suported project. He loved it. Ended out putting Linux
on it because he cold not get applications to run under NT on it. I
always figured it was the lack of applications that most likely caused
NT/Alpha's demise. (Where have we heard that before?)

I think most people bought the NT-only alphas to run linux. My department bought several Personal Workstation 300XL boxes...

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Sprag

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Michael Kraemer
German PC retailer Vobis had Alpha/NT boxes
for sale twice in the 1990s, in the very beginning
and around 1996/97.
They had them on display and mentioned in their
marketing flyers and in the trade press.
Nobody except a few alpha fanatics wanted them,

I don't know about that. We had a Physics Professor who bought one
for a grant suported project. He loved it. Ended out putting Linux
on it because he cold not get applications to run under NT on it. I
always figured it was the lack of applications that most likely caused
NT/Alpha's demise. (Where have we heard that before?)

I think most people bought the NT-only alphas to run linux. My
department bought several Personal Workstation 300XL boxes...

Not in this case. He specifically wanted to run Windows and was
disappointed when he couldn't. He held off on going to Linux as
long as he could. Interestingly enough after he made the move he
became very enamored with Linux. And that was back before it was
anything like what it is today.

bill

[John Reagan]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Even the "smart compilers" that
were going to be able to modify code based on profiling information
(did anyone ever actually do this?) struck me as a cute but improbable
idea.

Yep, yet another flaw in the Itanic concept.
But it was OK to give it at least a try.

The HP-UX Itanium compiler provides PBO (Profile Based Optimization). The NSK Itanium compiler provides PGO (Profile Guided Optimization). Same concept, different TLA. Compiler instruments the code, you run it to count various things, a data file written out, you compile again using that data file.

On Alpha, the Tru64 compilers had some PGO-like tools. GEM has the support to use profiling data. It was never enabled/ported to OpenVMS.

GCC provides PGO for x86 targets (-fprofile-generate and -fprofile-use) and so does Open64. I've seen discussions to add PGO to LLVM in the future.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by John Reagan

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Even the "smart compilers" that
were going to be able to modify code based on profiling information
(did anyone ever actually do this?) struck me as a cute but improbable
idea.

Yep, yet another flaw in the Itanic concept.
But it was OK to give it at least a try.

The HP-UX Itanium compiler provides PBO (Profile Based Optimization). The NSK Itanium compiler provides PGO (Profile Guided Optimization). Same concept, different TLA. Compiler instruments the code, you run it to count various things, a data file written out, you compile again using that data file.

That might be fine if you are running only code you develop in house
and you can continuously re-compile and re-insall applications. But
is Banner going to do that for every University running their product?
How about Cerner? I realize they are gone from VMS but the question is
as an application developer would they do that? And provide new compiles
every couple of weeks so you could keep up?

Post by John Reagan
On Alpha, the Tru64 compilers had some PGO-like tools. GEM has the support to use profiling data. It was never enabled/ported to OpenVMS.

Why? Because no one saw any real value in it in the real world?

Post by John Reagan
GCC provides PGO for x86 targets (-fprofile-generate and -fprofile-use) and so does Open64. I've seen discussions to add PGO to LLVM in the future.

How many commercial application developers collect these profiles from
their customers and provide customized binaries afterwards?

Profiling is nothing new. But trying to build it into the processor
which is going to be many levels separated from the developers was
just plain silly. Usable in a few very limited environments but of
no use to the general commercial IT world.

bill

[John Reagan]

Post by John Reagan
The HP-UX Itanium compiler provides PBO (Profile Based Optimization). The NSK Itanium compiler provides PGO (Profile Guided Optimization). Same concept, different TLA. Compiler instruments the code, you run it to count various things, a data file written out, you compile again using that data file.

Post by John Reagan
On Alpha, the Tru64 compilers had some PGO-like tools. GEM has the support to use profiling data. It was never enabled/ported to OpenVMS.

Why? Because no one saw any real value in it in the real world?

The decision that HPTC would be a Tru64 solution. Enabling it for OpenVMS would have been trivial. Plus, Alpha SPECmark numbers were never reported from OpenVMS, only from Tru64. You wanted PGO there to help get the best numbers.

Post by John Reagan

Post by John Reagan
GCC provides PGO for x86 targets (-fprofile-generate and -fprofile-use) and so does Open64. I've seen discussions to add PGO to LLVM in the future.

How many commercial application developers collect these profiles from
their customers and provide customized binaries afterwards?

Probably not that approach, but many certainly run "test loads" against their code to help detect the various branch likely/unlikely paths. Without any source syntax to indicate branch ratios, the compiler guesses. With any "test load", you can easily detect which branches are rare (ie, error paths and such) vs the common ones. The NSK kernel itself is built with PGO profiling data based on a "test load". Same with HPUX if I remember correctly.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by John Reagan

Post by John Reagan
The HP-UX Itanium compiler provides PBO (Profile Based Optimization). The NSK Itanium compiler provides PGO (Profile Guided Optimization). Same concept, different TLA. Compiler instruments the code, you run it to count various things, a data file written out, you compile again using that data file.

Post by John Reagan
On Alpha, the Tru64 compilers had some PGO-like tools. GEM has the support to use profiling data. It was never enabled/ported to OpenVMS.

Why? Because no one saw any real value in it in the real world?

The decision that HPTC would be a Tru64 solution. Enabling it for OpenVMS would have been trivial.

And yet they opted not to do it.

Post by John Reagan
Plus, Alpha SPECmark numbers were never reported from OpenVMS, only from Tru64. You wanted PGO there to help get the best numbers.

So you are saying this "feature" of the Itanium is nothing but a marketing
ploy with no value to real computing. So, what was it that made Itanium
look so promising?

Post by John Reagan

Post by John Reagan

Post by John Reagan
GCC provides PGO for x86 targets (-fprofile-generate and -fprofile-use) and so does Open64. I've seen discussions to add PGO to LLVM in the future.

How many commercial application developers collect these profiles from
their customers and provide customized binaries afterwards?

Probably not that approach, but many certainly run "test loads" against their code to help detect the various branch likely/unlikely paths. Without any source syntax to indicate branch ratios, the compiler guesses. With any "test load", you can easily detect which branches are rare (ie, error paths and such) vs the common ones. The NSK kernel itself is built with PGO profiling data based on a "test load". Same with HPUX if I remember correctly.

But that is not what was being pushed in the tech journals. "Test loads"
are not what my business does. If it offers nothing of value to real
users why then was it considered such an improvement that they killed
what were likely better processors to push this one?

All water under the bridge, really. Itanium is as dead as VMS and nothing
and no one is going to bring either of them back.

bill

[j***@yahoo.co.uk]

Post by John Reagan

Post by John Reagan
The HP-UX Itanium compiler provides PBO (Profile Based Optimization). The NSK Itanium compiler provides PGO (Profile Guided Optimization). Same concept, different TLA. Compiler instruments the code, you run it to count various things, a data file written out, you compile again using that data file.

Post by John Reagan
On Alpha, the Tru64 compilers had some PGO-like tools. GEM has the support to use profiling data. It was never enabled/ported to OpenVMS.

Why? Because no one saw any real value in it in the real world?

The decision that HPTC would be a Tru64 solution. Enabling it for OpenVMS would have been trivial. Plus, Alpha SPECmark numbers were never reported from OpenVMS, only from Tru64. You wanted PGO there to help get the best numbers.

Post by John Reagan

Post by John Reagan
GCC provides PGO for x86 targets (-fprofile-generate and -fprofile-use) and so does Open64. I've seen discussions to add PGO to LLVM in the future.

How many commercial application developers collect these profiles from
their customers and provide customized binaries afterwards?

Probably not that approach, but many certainly run "test loads" against their code to help detect the various branch likely/unlikely paths. Without any source syntax to indicate branch ratios, the compiler guesses. With any "test load", you can easily detect which branches are rare (ie, error paths and such) vs the common ones. The NSK kernel itself is built with PGO profiling data based on a "test load". Same with HPUX if I remember correctly.

[apologies if this is a duplicate]

See also "Spike", profile directed optimisation for NT/Alpha, in this
Digital Technical Journal article:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/dtj/vol9num4/vol9num4art1.pdf

Of course, NT on anything other than x86 became academic once MS decided they
weren't interested.

Prior to MS making that decision, Samsung were a licenced designer of Alpha
chips and had designed some interesting chips and some interesting systems. I
recently got rid of a 21164PC-based prototype. It wasn't very different in
hardware terms from any other Pentium-class board of its time (ATX, PCI, DIMMs,
etc).

These cheap+cheerful licenced Alpha designs were intentionally incapable of
running VMS, but perfectly capable of running NT or Tru64 or Linux or BSD or...

Because of MS's (and app and device vendors') reluctance to support anything
non-x86, only certain application sectors ever stood much chance on non-x86.

One such sector for Alpha might have been CAD, where performance might have
mattered. But CAD had too much diversity (too many apps, too many graphics
cards, too many etc) for Alpha to quickly catch on even when it had a
substantial performance lead.

One sector with less diversity was the pre-press sector, where the aim of the
game is to take a PostScript file from a publishing application on a desktop
(frequently but not always a Mac) and quickly (1) check and preview it (2)
convert it to a raster image for use with a high quality "computer to plate"
print subsystem. During the brief lifetime of NT/Alpha, Alpha went from nowhere
to being a serious player in that performance-critical sector where only a
handful of players mattered and DEC could make sure they were all on board.

Then MS decided NT was going to be x86-only. Why would MS care whether NT sold
on Alpha or on x86? All they wanted was the NT sale.

More recently, for many years the trend in IT departments has been to accept
that the fix for slow applications is to spend more money on faster hardware.
Unfortunately it's now several years since x86 single-stream throughput got
maxed out, and not everything gains from multicore.

Despite that, feedback-directed optimisation hasn't caught on. Advanced source
level optimisation as formerly practiced by e.g. Kuch and Associates
Preprocessor, aka KAP, which DEC and others used to sell, has also faded away.
KAP were independent, but then someone bought them (Intel) and their KAP
product is no longer available and doesn't seem to have been replaced.

NT didn't need Alpha. But once NT was x86-only again, Alpha outside DEC wasn't
really going anywhere. Linux on NT existed but this was long ago. Linux was
much less credible then than it is today.

VMS doesn't need Alpha. But some customers still think they need VMS, at least for a little while longer.

[David Froble]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
That might be fine if you are running only code you develop in house
and you can continuously re-compile and re-insall applications. But
is Banner going to do that for every University running their product?
How about Cerner? I realize they are gone from VMS but the question is
as an application developer would they do that? And provide new compiles
every couple of weeks so you could keep up?

Don't know about anyone else, but Codis customers for the most part get
nightly updates of any modifications to the application, and there are
automated procedures for the distribution and building of affected
applications.

I'm not writing this in support of EPIC, I've always thought it was a
very stupid idea.

I used the term "for the most part" because the database code and a few
other things are not included in the automated updates.

[Subcommandante XDelta]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.
The latter figure also is in better agreement
with the estimated $30M of revenue VMS creates.
$15000/a per customer on average seems
more likely than just $300/a (or are support contracts
that cheap these days?)

Going with those figures - 100,000 VMS shops; but only 2000 paying
customers, for the sake of argument.

Presumably those 2000 paying customers continue to pay, in the folorn
hope that by doing so, they might have some sway on the formal execution
date of VMS and the quality of the support provided.

The other 98,000 with their immortal License PAKS have told HP to bugger
off.

Rubbery figure time, based on questionable numbers, but assuming that
there were 100,000 VMS shops when HP merged with CPQ, and that number
remained stable, secondly assuming that HP had actually properly
supported and developed VMS and retained those 100,000 customers good
faith on maintenance contracts, and assuming a stable $15,000 a year for
said contracts.

Then the annual income from the VMS asset would be $1,500,000,000 -one
and half billion dollars annually.

So over the last decade that would have been 15 billion dollars gross
income.

What on earth could have possibly motivated HP to idle and run down and
degrade such a significant income generation engine?

Anyway that was just a dodgy "what if" based on rubbery figures, as a
conversation starter.

If the "100,000" is not the best estimate of remaining operating VMS
shops in the VMS ECOlogy, what is?

Would someone care to construct a better model for the income forgone by
HP over the last decade?

I have no doubt this has all been discussed in one form or another over
the last decade or more, but it is worth raking the coals over again, to
regain clarity on the potential of a rebooted VMS ECOlogy.

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Going with those figures - 100,000 VMS shops; but only 2000 paying
customers, for the sake of argument.
Presumably those 2000 paying customers continue to pay, in the folorn
hope that by doing so, they might have some sway on the formal execution
date of VMS and the quality of the support provided.

These 2000 are those remaining customers who think they
really need VMS to run their business and thus are willing
to pay for it.

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
The other 98,000 with their immortal License PAKS have told HP to bugger
off.

Again you are mixing systems with shops/customers.
The figure once quoted by an HP/Compaq honcho was 411000 systems
(aka 1 Gorham) out there, but that was a decade ago.
JFs estimate was that by now, this number is reduced to 100000.
This is a wild, but not entirely absurd guess,
but probably it's still too optimistic.
If we safely assume that the typical customer isn't a
mom-and-pop shop and thus runs several VMS systems,
the number of shops goes down into the five or four
digit range.

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Rubbery figure time, based on questionable numbers,

Sure, but since we don't have access to hard numbers,
we can only make educated guesses around the few figures
which have leaked out and verify whether
the picture is consistent.
To get hard numbers, one would probably have to be
an HP shareholder.

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
but assuming that
there were 100,000 VMS shops when HP merged with CPQ, and that number
remained stable, secondly assuming that HP had actually properly
supported and developed VMS and retained those 100,000 customers good
faith on maintenance contracts, and assuming a stable $15,000 a year for
said contracts.
Then the annual income from the VMS asset would be $1,500,000,000 -one
and half billion dollars annually.

That's absurd because you're still assuming 100000 shops,
which is almost certainly too high by an order of magnitude.
The $15000 figure is a guess from an estimated VMS-related
income of $30M/a divided by those 2000 customers who still
are willing to pay something.

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
So over the last decade that would have been 15 billion dollars gross
income.

Totally fantasy figure.

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
What on earth could have possibly motivated HP to idle and run down and
degrade such a significant income generation engine?

It's rubbish to always blame HP,
as if it would be solely up to them.
The customers have either decided to leave VMS altogether,
or to let run their legacy systems without support contracts.

Just a bit more food for thought:
a good fraction (if not the larger one) of those guessed 100000 systems
might still be Alphas or VAXen. The youngest Alpha nowadays is at least
7 years old, they youngest VAX is 13.
What's again the annual hardware support fee for such antiques?
I don't know what HP charges, but
if I look at the price list of a competitor, e.g. IBM, I find
figures of several $1000 per system per year, depending on age.
For such money, you could buy shiny new non-VMS servers each year.

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
If the "100,000" is not the best estimate of remaining operating VMS
shops in the VMS ECOlogy, what is?

2000 paying customers plus 1000 hobbyists
(estimated from the hobbyist PAK license counter).

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.
The latter figure also is in better agreement
with the estimated $30M of revenue VMS creates.
$15000/a per customer on average seems
more likely than just $300/a (or are support contracts
that cheap these days?)

Going with those figures - 100,000 VMS shops; but only 2000 paying
customers, for the sake of argument.

No-one said 100,000 SHOPS, but rather 100,000 SYSTEMS. Suppose a paying
customer has 50 systems (seems like a good average to me), then the
numbers are compatible.

[JF Mezei]

Post by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
No-one said 100,000 SHOPS, but rather 100,000 SYSTEMS. Suppose a paying
customer has 50 systems (seems like a good average to me), then the
numbers are compatible.

However, when you factor that large deployments such as Blockbuster
Video stores in USA and Canada which no longer exist, this may have
resulted in the loss of only 1 customer, but thousands of systems.

The loss of Cerner on VMS probably causes the loss of a few hundred
customers. (how many hospitals ran the cerner software on VMS ? hundreds
? thousands ?)

And since this required high up-time/availability, each cerner customer
would likely have had a minimum of 3 VMS nodes.

I know that in the case of SWIFT, Palmer told them that VMS was no
longer strategic to Digital, so they moved off of it. I have to assume
something similar happened with Cerner for them to decide to move off
VMS, with HP claiming that they hoped many customers would move to HP-UX.

So, when the owner of a product tells its customers to stop buying that
product, it should be no surprise to anyone that people stop buying it.

[David Froble]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
No-one said 100,000 SHOPS, but rather 100,000 SYSTEMS. Suppose a paying
customer has 50 systems (seems like a good average to me), then the
numbers are compatible.

However, when you factor that large deployments such as Blockbuster
Video stores in USA and Canada which no longer exist, this may have
resulted in the loss of only 1 customer, but thousands of systems.
The loss of Cerner on VMS probably causes the loss of a few hundred
customers. (how many hospitals ran the cerner software on VMS ? hundreds
? thousands ?)
And since this required high up-time/availability, each cerner customer
would likely have had a minimum of 3 VMS nodes.
I know that in the case of SWIFT, Palmer told them that VMS was no
longer strategic to Digital, so they moved off of it. I have to assume
something similar happened with Cerner for them to decide to move off
VMS, with HP claiming that they hoped many customers would move to HP-UX.

What's really funny here is that Cerner's Unix platform was AIX. Under
what circumstances could HP ever hope to get them to move to UP-UX?
None that I can imagine.

IBM had to get a big laugh from that.

Post by JF Mezei
So, when the owner of a product tells its customers to stop buying that
product, it should be no surprise to anyone that people stop buying it.

A friend ended up with a job with a group of hospitals. There was some
fierce efforts made by some to get the hospitals to implement a weendoze
environment. At one meeting Joe pointed out to the executives, "you can
pick any environment you want to, but the only 2 that do what we need is
IBM and DEC. The weendoze weenies lost that argument ....

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by David Froble

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
No-one said 100,000 SHOPS, but rather 100,000 SYSTEMS. Suppose a paying
customer has 50 systems (seems like a good average to me), then the
numbers are compatible.

However, when you factor that large deployments such as Blockbuster
Video stores in USA and Canada which no longer exist, this may have
resulted in the loss of only 1 customer, but thousands of systems.
The loss of Cerner on VMS probably causes the loss of a few hundred
customers. (how many hospitals ran the cerner software on VMS ? hundreds
? thousands ?)
And since this required high up-time/availability, each cerner customer
would likely have had a minimum of 3 VMS nodes.
I know that in the case of SWIFT, Palmer told them that VMS was no
longer strategic to Digital, so they moved off of it. I have to assume
something similar happened with Cerner for them to decide to move off
VMS, with HP claiming that they hoped many customers would move to HP-UX.

What's really funny here is that Cerner's Unix platform was AIX. Under
what circumstances could HP ever hope to get them to move to UP-UX?
None that I can imagine.
IBM had to get a big laugh from that.

Post by JF Mezei
So, when the owner of a product tells its customers to stop buying that
product, it should be no surprise to anyone that people stop buying it.

A friend ended up with a job with a group of hospitals. There was some
fierce efforts made by some to get the hospitals to implement a weendoze
environment. At one meeting Joe pointed out to the executives, "you can
pick any environment you want to, but the only 2 that do what we need is
IBM and DEC. The weendoze weenies lost that argument ....

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by David Froble

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
No-one said 100,000 SHOPS, but rather 100,000 SYSTEMS. Suppose a paying
customer has 50 systems (seems like a good average to me), then the
numbers are compatible.

However, when you factor that large deployments such as Blockbuster
Video stores in USA and Canada which no longer exist, this may have
resulted in the loss of only 1 customer, but thousands of systems.
The loss of Cerner on VMS probably causes the loss of a few hundred
customers. (how many hospitals ran the cerner software on VMS ? hundreds
? thousands ?)
And since this required high up-time/availability, each cerner customer
would likely have had a minimum of 3 VMS nodes.
I know that in the case of SWIFT, Palmer told them that VMS was no
longer strategic to Digital, so they moved off of it. I have to assume
something similar happened with Cerner for them to decide to move off
VMS, with HP claiming that they hoped many customers would move to HP-UX.

What's really funny here is that Cerner's Unix platform was AIX. Under
what circumstances could HP ever hope to get them to move to UP-UX?
None that I can imagine.
IBM had to get a big laugh from that.

Post by JF Mezei
So, when the owner of a product tells its customers to stop buying that
product, it should be no surprise to anyone that people stop buying it.

A friend ended up with a job with a group of hospitals. There was some
fierce efforts made by some to get the hospitals to implement a weendoze
environment. At one meeting Joe pointed out to the executives, "you can
pick any environment you want to, but the only 2 that do what we need is
IBM and DEC. The weendoze weenies lost that argument ....

Ooops. Sorry. Hit the wrong button.

I just wanted to say that Joe would have been wrong as there are
Windows based alternatives to Cerner. Systems that also run on
VMS, but that is another issue. Some have been around longer
than Cerner and run on multiple platforms. But then, no one
expects executives to have a clue either. They have to rely on
their SME's and when they bullshit them, what else can they do?

bill

[Subcommandante XDelta]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by David Froble

Post by JF Mezei
when the owner of a product tells its customers to stop buying that
product, it should be no surprise to anyone that people stop buying it.

A friend ended up with a job with a group of hospitals. There was some
fierce efforts made by some to get the hospitals to implement a weendoze
environment. At one meeting Joe pointed out to the executives, "you can
pick any environment you want to, but the only 2 that do what we need is
IBM and DEC. The weendoze weenies lost that argument ....

Ooops. Sorry. Hit the wrong button.
I just wanted to say that Joe would have been wrong as there are
Windows based alternatives to Cerner. Systems that also run on
VMS, but that is another issue. Some have been around longer
than Cerner and run on multiple platforms. But then, no one
expects executives to have a clue either. They have to rely on
their SME's and when they bullshit them, what else can they do?
bill

Well, can not the same be said for Meg Whitman with reference to the
quality of the briefings to her on VMS from her managerial sub-ordinates?

Might as well assume that she is not cut from the same cloth as the
cavalier cavalcade of clowns, criminals, and carpet-baggers, acting the
role of CEO, that have strutted on stage under the proscenium arch of
the HP top management repertory theatre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses

Thus, shades of Martin Luther, we come back to the Swedes of the VNA
(VMS Nordic Alliance) locking shields, getting their (long) ship
together, going viking to the USA and posting their full-page thesis
near the front door (within the first five pages) of the Church of the
Fortune five hundred, the Wall Street journal, to the current "Pope" of HP.

(Aside: Apart from VNA, another possibility is VANIR - VMS Activism
Nordic Insurgent Resistance)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanir

It is the necessary circuit breaker, she will be forced to read it,
forced to refer and respond to it in some manner, and if she has a
skerric of a homeopathic trace of an iota of competence, she will do her
own, independent prudential due diligence on VMS.

Not that HP having a "Damascene conversion" at the eleventh hour,
fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second on the HP VMS Midnight Clock
is the preferred outcome.

Rather agreeing to sell VMS to a consortium composed of the remaining
2000 paying customers, to preserve HPs reputation that they give a damn
about their business customers.

After which the 2000 can charge themselves a fortune for maintenance,
support, research and development, and without paradox, reap the
dividends of total control over quality assurance over those four
functions, above and beyond any conventional dividends, that may arise.

[JF Mezei]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Rather agreeing to sell VMS to a consortium composed of the remaining
2000 paying customers, to preserve HPs reputation that they give a damn
about their business customers.

What is left to sell ?

There is no engineering group. The value of VMS (or any OS) lies in the
brains that have enough knowledge/experience to avoid pitfalls such as
buffer overruns, create proper documentation etc. It is all gone.

And apart from restructuring teh source code to allow multi platform and
ease porting, there hasn't been much development in VMS for about 15 years.

Also, remember that Digital donated much of the IP to Microsoft in
exchange for the right to sell Windows. HP ditched attekps to port the
clustering stuff to HP-UX.

At this point in time, I would say that VMS has $0 residual value in
terms of the OS itself. (support business might have some),

VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by JF Mezei
VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

With all the respect I must have with the ancestors, what are you doing
here, in comp.os.VMS, Sir ?
You want to shit VMS ? OK. Do it elsewhere, have a chair with Mister
Bill Gates.

[JF Mezei]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
With all the respect I must have with the ancestors, what are you doing
here, in comp.os.VMS, Sir ?

You know in those movies where a patient dies, and the doctor just won't
accept it and tries to rescussitate the patient over and over again but
it never works ?

I am the person next to him that eventually convinces him that it's over
and there is nothing left that can be done.

I remember being laughed at when HP annoucned it was buying Compaq and
mentioend every product except VMS and I said it was not a good sign for
VMS.

I remember being laughed at when the famous Stallard Memo came out
because it was obvious to me that HP did not intend to move ahead.

I remember being laughed at when LaCarly announced in 2004 the end of
IA64 workstations, and not long after, Intel not only announcing 64 bit
8086s, but also that CSI a tech that should have been only IA64 also
going to 8086. (CSI si now known as Quickpath).

I remember being laughed at whenever I would hear HP senior folks like
Livermore and above speaking alsop always limiting their VMS commenrts
to supporting existing customers while they would go much further for
the other product lines.

I remember nobody taking me seriously when HP/Livermore stated
categorically that VMS would not be ported beyond IA64 (at a time when
the coundown for IA64 had laread begun for most).

And when the news came that VMS engineering had been replaced by folks
in india, I was the only one who noticed how HP would not allow any
staff member to discuss just how many indians were replacing the VMS
engineers. That is a bad bad sign.


And you barge in now when the patient is already dead and ask me what
have I done ?

Where were you when the patient was sick and in need of medecine ? I was
told to leave this group by many because I kept pointing out how sick
VMS was and that he needed forceful medecine.

I am here for the burrial. The best that can be hopes now is for open
sourcing of parts (or all) of VMS.

It just is not realistic to get HP to reconsider because even if VMS
were ported to x86, it would need a HUGE investment to bring it back up
to par, with over 15 years of neglect.

[Subcommandante XDelta]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by JF Mezei
VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

With all the respect I must have with the ancestors, what are you doing
here, in comp.os.VMS, Sir ?
You want to shit VMS ? OK. Do it elsewhere, have a chair with Mister
Bill Gates.

Now, now, Gerard, the inveterate grizzled veterans of comp.os.vms have
been keeping watch for a decade or more, they've seen it all and
discussed it all, over and over, reiterations on the announcement of the
next chapter of major disappointment, chapter after chapter after chapter.

Rage, anger, frustration, grief, sorrow, fatigue, rage fatigue, anger
fatigue, sorrow and grief fatigue, even fatigue fatigue may have been
experienced; some survival cynicism air-bages may also have inflated.

Some, but not all, (I am not really thinking of anyone in particular)
may have enchanted themselves, into a funk of apparent disempowerment,
that there is nothing that can be done about the situation. It is just a
bad-habit they have got into, if such comp.os.vms collegiates exist,
they can talking their way, enchant their way out of that funk of
apparent disempowerment, or perhaps they can be talked out of it,
patiently and persistently.

One thing is for certain, funked up or funked over, comp.os.vms is one
of the greatest, if not the greatest concentration of decades of
man-years experience of VMS on the Internet; no one lurks here or
participates here, if they do not give a damn about VMS.

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by JF Mezei
VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

With all the respect I must have with the ancestors, what are you doing
here, in comp.os.VMS, Sir ?
You want to shit VMS ? OK. Do it elsewhere, have a chair with Mister
Bill Gates.

Now, now, Gerard, the inveterate grizzled veterans of comp.os.vms have
been keeping watch for a decade or more, they've seen it all and
discussed it all, over and over, reiterations on the announcement of the
next chapter of major disappointment, chapter after chapter after chapter.
Rage, anger, frustration, grief, sorrow, fatigue, rage fatigue, anger
fatigue, sorrow and grief fatigue, even fatigue fatigue may have been
experienced; some survival cynicism air-bages may also have inflated.
Some, but not all, (I am not really thinking of anyone in particular)
may have enchanted themselves, into a funk of apparent disempowerment,
that there is nothing that can be done about the situation. It is just a
bad-habit they have got into, if such comp.os.vms collegiates exist,
they can talking their way, enchant their way out of that funk of
apparent disempowerment, or perhaps they can be talked out of it,
patiently and persistently.
One thing is for certain, funked up or funked over, comp.os.vms is one
of the greatest, if not the greatest concentration of decades of
man-years experience of VMS on the Internet; no one lurks here or
participates here, if they do not give a damn about VMS.

I'm just saying bitterness is not cleverness.

I hear here a lot of "you can't do anything, don't do anything, WE KNOW
there is no thing to do". OK. So, all the "greatest man-years
experience" is just able to say this sort of thing ? Is it for this sort
of thing an usenet comp.os.vms exists ?

I agree about a lot of things said here, I understand bitternes, angry,...

But there is a sort of thing I cannot agree on. A peremptory way of
analysing to conclude that we must not do anything. I hear behind this
sort of talk a way of disallowing any sort of critic, and refusing any
sort of innovation.

DEC and persons at DEC have been wrong, Compaq has been wrong, HP has
been worse...

An what about us ?

There is a very slow acceptance and less than expected sells of Itanium.
Yes, and mainly in the OpenVMS base. Who has cried about "Itanic" the
most, who were willing to revange OUR Alpha ? WE did.

Unixes, Linuxes are at the top, we are at the bottom. Yes. Who looked
down on these Berkeley-with-flowers-in-the-beard OS for dummies ? Who
disregarded progression of ip, internet ? We did.

Oracle and his java trillion of devices is at he top, more than 50% of
funny applications are in java, and our "antique OS" is not so simple to
use in the context ? Who shited Java the most ? We did.

There are big Open Sources communities. If there is here more than
hundred of readers, it is a maximum. But we were for a long time
thinking about Open Sources communities as the contrary of
professionality. We were wrong.

Ok, ok, on all that points it is possible to argue. What I am saying is
that we, as a community of professionals are able to do mistakes, and
perhaps we did. A bitterness only talk is a way of not thinking about
our mistakes.

The biggest, I think, is not being able to do things without mama HP,
and crying when she doesn't do the wright things.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by Subcommandante XDelta

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by JF Mezei
VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

With all the respect I must have with the ancestors, what are you doing
here, in comp.os.VMS, Sir ?
You want to shit VMS ? OK. Do it elsewhere, have a chair with Mister
Bill Gates.

Now, now, Gerard, the inveterate grizzled veterans of comp.os.vms have
been keeping watch for a decade or more, they've seen it all and
discussed it all, over and over, reiterations on the announcement of the
next chapter of major disappointment, chapter after chapter after chapter.
Rage, anger, frustration, grief, sorrow, fatigue, rage fatigue, anger
fatigue, sorrow and grief fatigue, even fatigue fatigue may have been
experienced; some survival cynicism air-bages may also have inflated.
Some, but not all, (I am not really thinking of anyone in particular)
may have enchanted themselves, into a funk of apparent disempowerment,
that there is nothing that can be done about the situation. It is just a
bad-habit they have got into, if such comp.os.vms collegiates exist,
they can talking their way, enchant their way out of that funk of
apparent disempowerment, or perhaps they can be talked out of it,
patiently and persistently.
One thing is for certain, funked up or funked over, comp.os.vms is one
of the greatest, if not the greatest concentration of decades of
man-years experience of VMS on the Internet; no one lurks here or
participates here, if they do not give a damn about VMS.

I'm just saying bitterness is not cleverness.

iMost don't see it as bitterness, just reality.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
I hear here a lot of "you can't do anything, don't do anything, WE KNOW
there is no thing to do". OK. So, all the "greatest man-years
experience" is just able to say this sort of thing ? Is it for this sort
of thing an usenet comp.os.vms exists ?

Once again, reality. HP owns VMS. Lock, stock and barrel. When they
say its dead, its dead. I am still waiting for someone to provide a
copy of the "eternal PAK" as I expect it is only eternal until the owner
of VMS says "we withdraw permission".

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
I agree about a lot of things said here, I understand bitternes, angry,...
But there is a sort of thing I cannot agree on. A peremptory way of
analysing to conclude that we must not do anything. I hear behind this
sort of talk a way of disallowing any sort of critic, and refusing any
sort of innovation.

It is certainly not that "we must not do anything" as much as you can
do nothing. You don't own it. You don't control it. If HP is not
willing to keep it going, it will die. And all this talk of releasing
OS source to the public. That is downright laughable. Which of the
OSes that preceded VMS is currently available to the community in source
form? Only one I know of and the argument there is that it was never
really the property of any of the parties we are dealing with for VMS
and was, in fact, released by its true owners. And just to make the
picture even bleaker, the sources that were eventually released (actually
rounded up is a better term as DEC/Compaq/HP never provided any of it)
are not even tha last producton version.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
DEC and persons at DEC have been wrong, Compaq has been wrong, HP has
been worse...
An what about us ?

Your also wrong. You are talking about somehow forcing HP to do something
that they have never shown any interest in and are very unlikely to change
their minds about now.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
There is a very slow acceptance and less than expected sells of Itanium.
Yes, and mainly in the OpenVMS base. Who has cried about "Itanic" the
most, who were willing to revange OUR Alpha ? WE did.

How did you "revenge ... Alpha"? It's as dead today as it was last year
and the year before that, etc.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Unixes, Linuxes are at the top, we are at the bottom. Yes. Who looked
down on these Berkeley-with-flowers-in-the-beard OS for dummies ? Who
disregarded progression of ip, internet ? We did.

What's your point? Bragging about backing the wrong horse?

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Oracle and his java trillion of devices is at he top, more than 50% of
funny applications are in java, and our "antique OS" is not so simple to
use in the context ? Who shited Java the most ? We did.

See comment above! :-)

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
There are big Open Sources communities. If there is here more than
hundred of readers, it is a maximum. But we were for a long time
thinking about Open Sources communities as the contrary of
professionality. We were wrong.

No, actually got that one right.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Ok, ok, on all that points it is possible to argue. What I am saying is
that we, as a community of professionals are able to do mistakes, and
perhaps we did. A bitterness only talk is a way of not thinking about
our mistakes.
The biggest, I think, is not being able to do things without mama HP,
and crying when she doesn't do the wright things.

"mama HP" owns VMS. Without "mama HP" you do nothing with VMS and
"mama HP" has said VMS is done. It really is time to admit that
the writting has been on the wall for quite some time and move on.
VMS is not the first OS to face this end. Others also had very
loyal followings. But in the end, we all got over it (yes, I for
one lament not only the demise of RSTS but also Primos which I had
intimate knowledge of as I was an OS maintainer!!)

bill

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
It is certainly not that "we must not do anything" as much as you can
do nothing. You don't own it. You don't control it. If HP is not
willing to keep it going, it will die.

Ok. I heard about USA as a free country, and liberal economics as
freedom bases.

So.

About 4000 customers around te world saying "our supplier is a dumb".
Two or three free analysts saying "this decision is a bug". About 100000
users saying we think about our security. About 1 article in the "wall
street journal" saying "hum, HP stake-holders have buyed the wrong
action, buy Oracle actions". One big thinker saying "cloud" is a risk,
and is not the same thing as mission critical... One political analyst
saying "Obama choosed the wring IT manager" (oups ! I don't know
anything about US politicals, forget it !)....

In a free country, with free customers and free market, it is not
possible to act against twenty dumb managers ? The very name of HP DG is
not Meg Withman, but Joseph Staline ? Tell me about that, because I have
to choose my next hollydays, and I thought USA was a good choice, and
for now, I'm in uncertainity.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by Bill Gunshannon
It is certainly not that "we must not do anything" as much as you can
do nothing. You don't own it. You don't control it. If HP is not
willing to keep it going, it will die.

And people wonder why no one takes c.o.v denizens seriously....

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Ok. I heard about USA as a free country, and liberal economics as
freedom bases.

Certainly. But, apparently you have a totally different understanding of
what that means than the rest of the world.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
So.
About 4000 customers around te world saying "our supplier is a dumb".

4000 customers in an industry with probably more than 400,000,000
customers? Insignificant. It is even insignificant if you only
looked at the US.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Two or three free analysts saying "this decision is a bug".

Not sure what a "free analyst" is but unless your paying him to say
it none is likely to write anything good about VMS. Analysts don't
follow the rants of people out of touch with reality, they follow
real trends in business.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
About 100000
users saying we think about our security.

As has been pointed out, VMS didn't have the security market cornered.
And 100000 users is still insignificant in a business with several
hundred million users.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
About 1 article in the "wall
street journal" saying "hum, HP stake-holders have buyed the wrong
action, buy Oracle actions".

Why on earth would they say that?

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
One big thinker saying "cloud" is a risk,
and is not the same thing as mission critical... One political analyst
saying "Obama choosed the wring IT manager" (oups ! I don't know
anything about US politicals, forget it !)....

Apparently don't know a lot about a lot of things. But, lets continue...

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
In a free country, with free customers and free market, it is not
possible to act against twenty dumb managers ?

Sure it is. Start your own company and compete against them. But
you don't own VMS and have no say in what its owners want to do with
it. That's one of the tihings that "free" means. HP is "free" to
do whatever it wants with its property regardless of what you think.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
The very name of HP DG is
not Meg Withman, but Joseph Staline ?

Huh? Seems you are the one with Stalinist leanings. You want to force
someone to meet your desires regarding the disposition of their property.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Tell me about that, because I have
to choose my next hollydays, and I thought USA was a good choice, and
for now, I'm in uncertainity.

So, let me get this straight, if Space Mountain is being run by a VAX
with VMS you won't be coming to Disneyland.

bill

[JF Mezei]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
4000 customers in an industry with probably more than 400,000,000
customers? Insignificant. It is even insignificant if you only
looked at the US.

NSK has always had fewer customers than VMS. And yet, those fewer
customers managed to convince HP to port to x86 instead of announcing EOL.

If the CEO of NASDAQ tells Meg Whitman that if she forces him to migrate
from NSK, then whenever NASDAQ has a computer glitch, it will blame it
on the fact that HP abandonned the serious computers needed to run
mission critical companies.

NSK happens to be used by high profile customers who have the ability to
hurt HP's image.

VMS customers tend to be low key quiet customers who don't want the
world to know they run VMS.

So when the rug is pulled from under VMS, nobody with any significant
media contacts complains and HP's image is not hurt.

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Not sure what a "free analyst" is but unless your paying him to say
it none is likely to write anything good about VMS. Analysts don't
follow the rants of people out of touch with reality, they follow
real trends in business.

Until HP annouced the VMS roadmap no longer included new versions and no
longer included a patch to run on Poulson, there was no actionable
evidence HP was pulling the plug on VMS.

When HP massacred VMS engineering, it first tried to hide this, but
eventually relented and allowed one web cast to explain the situation
and promised that VMS development was going on like before and that
customers should see no change.

It all has to do with trends and observations over time. None of those
provided hard evidence that could convince a reporter to write about it.

And even the current announcement from HP shys away from making a formal
EOL announcement. It is all there, end of availability fo Tukwila in
2015, no new versions of VMS, but it also says there will be new patches
issued, and leaves door open for reconsideration.

If HP is to change its mind about VMS at this point, it won't be up to
users, it would be up to a few key customers going to Whitman directly.

One of the problems with VMS was its isolation. Complaints through
normal channels would never leave the "safe" enclave of VMS/BCS and
never go higher than the BCS manager. That is why you need customers
with an activist CEO capable of bypassing all the "filtration" within HP
ranks and talk direcly to the CEO.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Hi.

Just got an email from the "HP-Connect Sweden" OpenVMS-SIG.

I'm trying a quick translation from swedish here:

--------------------------------------------------------------
Hi.

Our last info-letter contained concernes about HP going to shut
down development of OpenVMS. It nows seems as HP is going to
fullfill that plan. This far there is nothing saying otherwise.

HP will not support OpenVMS on their i4-servers, so no servers
newer then i2 will run OpenVMS. This also meens that OpenVMS
now more or less is "frozen", and that patches will be issues
less frequently.

OTOH, HP will prolong sales of i2-servers, and will support
OpenVMS V8.4 for a long time ahead. But the fact stands, with
a product that is not developed, we risk to lose support from
other ISV's whos productes we depend on.

This also meens that OpenVMS probably will not be a supported
guest-OS under HPVM version 6.

We, that runs OpenVMS, does that for a reason. It's very stable
and it simply works damn well. Our applications often makes good
use of VMS-specific features.

Many of us has also done attempts to migrate to other platforms but
these attempts has for different reasons not been followed through.

The applications that we still run on OpenVMS are very business critical,
which might be one reason the migrations has not been completed. For
some reason one has not dared to complete the migration since a failure
could be catastrophic for the business supported by the applications.

Given that HP will not change it's mind, we now are forced to migrate
these critical applications to another target platform, and we can
not afford to fail in this effort.

We will therefor invite to a SIG-workshop, the 22'th Januari 2014 in
Stockholm. Specific time and place comes later, but count on a full
day where we walk through the available options and discuss the
possible routes to take.

We will have several guest-speakers, but it will be an interactive
work-shop with an open dialoge members in between.

See you the 22'th Januari.
--------------------------------------------------------------

When the place and time is available, I will concider going
to this meeting.

Jan-Erik.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Bill Gunshannon
4000 customers in an industry with probably more than 400,000,000
customers? Insignificant. It is even insignificant if you only
looked at the US.

NSK has always had fewer customers than VMS. And yet, those fewer
customers managed to convince HP to port to x86 instead of announcing EOL.

Or maybe HP just saw a future in NSK that it did not see for VMS. Don't
try to attribute power to people who probably have n more than the VMS
community had. By your own statements HP has placed a higher value on
NSK from the very binning than it did on VMS.

Post by JF Mezei
If the CEO of NASDAQ tells Meg Whitman that if she forces him to migrate
from NSK, then whenever NASDAQ has a computer glitch, it will blame it
on the fact that HP abandonned the serious computers needed to run
mission critical companies.

And the world world would laugh at him. His inability to control his
operation is not Meg Whitman's problem. And keeping NASDAQ running
isn't HP's.

Post by JF Mezei
NSK happens to be used by high profile customers who have the ability to
hurt HP's image.
VMS customers tend to be low key quiet customers who don't want the
world to know they run VMS.

I don't think profile has anything to do with it. Money does. Obviously
NSK users poured more money into HP's coffers than VMS users did. In the
end, it's all about the money.

Post by JF Mezei
So when the rug is pulled from under VMS, nobody with any significant
media contacts complains and HP's image is not hurt.

The only part image plays in any of this is the guarantee that HP will
not reverse itself, meaning VMS is truly dead at this point. Companies
like HP never admit to a mistake.

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Not sure what a "free analyst" is but unless your paying him to say
it none is likely to write anything good about VMS. Analysts don't
follow the rants of people out of touch with reality, they follow
real trends in business.

Until HP annouced the VMS roadmap no longer included new versions and no
longer included a patch to run on Poulson, there was no actionable
evidence HP was pulling the plug on VMS.

Oh puleezze. The writing has been on the wal for ages. Go back and
read some of your own posts.

Post by JF Mezei
When HP massacred VMS engineering, it first tried to hide this, but
eventually relented and allowed one web cast to explain the situation
and promised that VMS development was going on like before and that
customers should see no change.

I missed that. I didn't see them hide anything.

Post by JF Mezei
It all has to do with trends and observations over time. None of those
provided hard evidence that could convince a reporter to write about it.
And even the current announcement from HP shys away from making a formal
EOL announcement. It is all there, end of availability fo Tukwila in
2015, no new versions of VMS, but it also says there will be new patches
issued, and leaves door open for reconsideration.

They burned their boats once. Why would you expect different now?
Read what I said above. Never admit a mistake. Never let them see
you flinch.

Post by JF Mezei
If HP is to change its mind about VMS at this point, it won't be up to
users, it would be up to a few key customers going to Whitman directly.

There are no key customers. If there were we never would have gotten to
this point. HP is not going to reverse itself.

Post by JF Mezei
One of the problems with VMS was its isolation. Complaints through
normal channels would never leave the "safe" enclave of VMS/BCS and
never go higher than the BCS manager. That is why you need customers
with an activist CEO capable of bypassing all the "filtration" within HP
ranks and talk direcly to the CEO.

Theonly problem I saw with VMS was the total lack of interest on the
part of its owners that resulted in the decline of use and thus the
decline in generated revenue compared to cost of maintenance. Giving
up the education world was a primary sign of this.

bill

[JF Mezei]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Oh puleezze. The writing has been on the wal for ages. Go back and
read some of your own posts.

Yep. But HP was still saying VMS was still being developped and that
IA64 had a long bright future ahead. So media couldn't really quote the
"writing on the wall" which HO continued to deny until this year.

And here is the problem: with huge walls painted with that writing, how
come the large corporate clients of VMS didn't go to Carly/Hurd/Whitman
to convince them that VMS was unique and had to be preserved ? NSK
customers did manage to convince HP of this.

It is quite possible that those large key VMS customers had very little
resistance to moving to a different platform and hence very little
lobbying happened to save VMS.

Post by Bill Gunshannon
I missed that. I didn't see them hide anything.

HP refused to say how many indians were being hired to replace VMS
engineering. And during the web conference, a slide was provided to show
some of the key employees in India. HP corporate required that slide be
taken down because it was never meant to be public.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Oh puleezze. The writing has been on the wal for ages. Go back and
read some of your own posts.

Yep. But HP was still saying VMS was still being developped and that
IA64 had a long bright future ahead. So media couldn't really quote the
"writing on the wall" which HO continued to deny until this year.

So HP was lying. Nothing new there. Actions speak louder than words and
HP's actions clearly demonstrated the lack of future for VMS.

Post by JF Mezei
And here is the problem: with huge walls painted with that writing, how
come the large corporate clients of VMS didn't go to Carly/Hurd/Whitman
to convince them that VMS was unique and had to be preserved ?

Maybe they did. But, maybe also HP had decided from the beginning that
VMS was not strategic,

Post by JF Mezei
NSK
customers did manage to convince HP of this.

Because, when you come right down to it, VMS customers did not place the
same value in VMS that NSK users placed on NSK. Or, HP saw NSK as
strategic from the start which they didn't with VMS.

Post by JF Mezei
It is quite possible that those large key VMS customers had very little
resistance to moving to a different platform and hence very little
lobbying happened to save VMS.

I'll accept that.

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Bill Gunshannon
I missed that. I didn't see them hide anything.

HP refused to say how many indians were being hired to replace VMS
engineering.

Hiding would have meant not even telling people it moved. Moving it
and not saying if the replacement was equivalent is not hiding but
putting more writting on the wall for everyone to see.

Post by JF Mezei
And during the web conference, a slide was provided to show
some of the key employees in India. HP corporate required that slide be
taken down because it was never meant to be public.

And? See above. Hiding would have been never saying anything in order
to make people believe things were going on as usual. Painting a bleak
picture and then not assuaging people's fears is blatant and definitely
not hidden.

bill

[JF Mezei]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Hiding would have meant not even telling people it moved. Moving it
and not saying if the replacement was equivalent is not hiding but
putting more writting on the wall for everyone to see.

It was because of one very courageous person that it became known that
VMS engineering was sacked and replaced by some indian group. HP had
explicitly told VMS engineering that silence/NDA was part of the deal
otherwise they risked losing the benefits associated with their sacking.

HP had no intentions to make the change public. And when it did become
public, all it would say was that the change would be transparent to
customers.

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by JF Mezei
It was because of one very courageous person that it became known that
VMS engineering was sacked and replaced by some indian group. HP had
explicitly told VMS engineering that silence/NDA was part of the deal
otherwise they risked losing the benefits associated with their sacking.
HP had no intentions to make the change public.

Should they?
I can't remember any company discussing human resources issues
with the rest of the world.

Post by JF Mezei
And when it did become
public, all it would say was that the change would be transparent to
customers.

And therefore there's no need to inform the customers.

[JF Mezei]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by JF Mezei
And when it did become
public, all it would say was that the change would be transparent to
customers.

And therefore there's no need to inform the customers.

But in reality, they ditched VMS engineering and replaced it with a team
barely capable of doing maintenance, let alone real development. So this
is a material change which HP sought to hide from VMS customers o that
customers would delay the official recognition that VMS was dead.

This recognition came this year, and from now on, HP will likely wish to
accelerate the demise in order to end its liabilities as soon as posisble.

BTW, remember all those claims that DEC, then Compaq and then HP would
honour development of VMS until well beyopnd 2020 in order to meet
military requirements for those big sales they made ? Wonder where those
contracts went.

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by JF Mezei
But in reality, they ditched VMS engineering and replaced it with a team
barely capable of doing maintenance, let alone real development. So this
is a material change which HP sought to hide from VMS customers o that
customers would delay the official recognition that VMS was dead.

I don't see this as an indication that VMS was dead,
just a cost cutting measure in the first place.
(of course it was an indication that VMS wasn't doing well,
but it's up to the customers to buy more VMS gear to
improve the situation)

Quite a few IT companies moved their teams to india,
I bet HP-UX is there as well, and a couple of years ago
rumour had it that AIX is already there.
(there were some really newbie questions from indians
in the related NGs)
But maybe IBM have a better QA for their products?

Post by JF Mezei
BTW, remember all those claims that DEC, then Compaq and then HP would
honour development of VMS until well beyopnd 2020 in order to meet
military requirements for those big sales they made ? Wonder where those
contracts went.

Maybe BG (no, not Bill Gates :-) could jump in here once again
and point out that these long term contracts never existed?

[JF Mezei]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by JF Mezei
But in reality, they ditched VMS engineering and replaced it with a team
barely capable of doing maintenance, let alone real development. So this
is a material change which HP sought to hide from VMS customers o that
customers would delay the official recognition that VMS was dead.

I don't see this as an indication that VMS was dead,
just a cost cutting measure in the first place.

Just like every others steps taken by HP, each step taken by itself is
not enough to draw the conclusion HP was not interested in VMS.

Take the ever shrinking VMS roadmap, take HP not wanting to announce the
dismantlement of VMS engineering, take HP refusing to say whether the
replacement team in India has the same capabilities/manpower, and that
draws a pretty straight line towards end of life for a product.

If the move to India had been accompanied with an increase in roadmap,
some advertising etc, then things would have been interpreted differently.

But there has alwasy been a consistent line from the day HP announced
its purchase of Compaq until this year, and that line was downward.

It isn't the individual points along the line that matter, but rather
the direction painted by the line.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by JF Mezei
But in reality, they ditched VMS engineering and replaced it with a team
barely capable of doing maintenance, let alone real development. So this
is a material change which HP sought to hide from VMS customers o that
customers would delay the official recognition that VMS was dead.

I don't see this as an indication that VMS was dead,
just a cost cutting measure in the first place.
(of course it was an indication that VMS wasn't doing well,
but it's up to the customers to buy more VMS gear to
improve the situation)
Quite a few IT companies moved their teams to india,
I bet HP-UX is there as well, and a couple of years ago
rumour had it that AIX is already there.
(there were some really newbie questions from indians
in the related NGs)
But maybe IBM have a better QA for their products?

Post by JF Mezei
BTW, remember all those claims that DEC, then Compaq and then HP would
honour development of VMS until well beyopnd 2020 in order to meet
military requirements for those big sales they made ? Wonder where those
contracts went.

Maybe BG (no, not Bill Gates :-) could jump in here once again
and point out that these long term contracts never existed?

Two points:
1: I never said they never existed. I even pointed out some still
existing use of VMS (VAX/VMS) at places like Moffett Field and
Hurlburt Field. And, it is well known that J-Stars was (maybe
still is) VMS but the governments contract was not with HP and I
doubt they ever saw any money from this contract after the initial
purchase of equipment as it was maintained by the contractor.
2: There is no such thing as a "long term contract" in the government.
All contracts run from 1 October to 30 September. They may have
options to renew, but can be terminated with the swipe of a pen.
Money can not be committed beyond the end of any given FY. Failure
to include any particular contract in the new budget effectively
terminates it.

bill

[Stephen Hoffman]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
2: There is no such thing as a "long term contract" in the government.
All contracts run from 1 October to 30 September. They may have
options to renew, but can be terminated with the swipe of a pen.
Money can not be committed beyond the end of any given FY. Failure
to include any particular contract in the new budget effectively
terminates it.

<http://www.wifcon.com/anal/analfiveyear.htm>
<http://www.navair.navy.mil/nawctsd/Resources/Library/Acqguide/contract-method-multiyear-contracting.htm>

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Stephen Hoffman

Post by Bill Gunshannon
2: There is no such thing as a "long term contract" in the government.
All contracts run from 1 October to 30 September. They may have
options to renew, but can be terminated with the swipe of a pen.
Money can not be committed beyond the end of any given FY. Failure
to include any particular contract in the new budget effectively
terminates it.

<http://www.wifcon.com/anal/analfiveyear.htm>
<http://www.navair.navy.mil/nawctsd/Resources/Library/Acqguide/contract-method-multiyear-contracting.htm>

From the second one:

"Cancellation" means the cancellation (within a contractually
specified time) of the total requirements of all remaining
program years. Cancellation results when the contracting officer-

Notifies the contractor of nonavailability of funds for contract
performance for any subsequent program year; or
Fails to notify the contractor that funds are available for
performance of the succeeding program year requirement.

Which is what I said turned around to make it sound like something
different. In government contracting almost all contracts are stated
as multiple-year contracts but each year has to be specifically
budgeted for. As stated in the Navy document the contract ceases if
either lack of funding is explicitly stated or if the government just
ignores it and lets it lapse.

For those who love to laugh about $5000 hammers this is one of the
primary reasons for that. A contractor has to make back all of the
initial expenses for a given contract in the first year rather than
spreading them over the proposed life of the contract because he has
no reasonable expectation that the contract will be renewed beyond
the first year. It is also the reason why the incumbent is more
likely to win a contract renewal rather than someone coming in new.

I have been on both sides of the contracting game. I wrote RFP's on
the government side when I was military. I had to take Contract Officer
training when I was a Warrant Officer (my last 8 years in the Army
before my 2011 retirement) because any officer can be tagged to be a
contracting officer. I worked on responses to RFP's and support of
contracts won as an employee of Martin Marietta and TRWIND. I have
not spent my entire life in academia (like most of my peers!!)

bill

[Stephen Hoffman]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
"Cancellation" means the cancellation (within a contractually
specified time) of the total requirements of all remaining
program years.

So your definition of "there are no multi-year contracts" is "there are
multi-year contracts, but they have clauses"? OK.

It's common for commercial contracts to include cancellation clauses,
termination clauses and non-payment clauses, too. Most any cellphone
plan with a subsidy involved will have these. Few private entities
would sign a multi-year contract without those clauses. Which leads me
to wonder what the particular distinction you're drawing here might be.
That the contracts have those clauses by default? Well, um, I've
seen more than a few boiler-plate contracts over the years, some
clearly quite directly copied from contract templates. (Having chatted
with a lawyer on this topic, also which particular clauses should be
struck out and declined during associated negotiations, but that's
fodder for another discussion.)

The local municipality has done multi-year purchases for various items
and very likely will again, and that's hardly unusual. There are
specific requirements set by the state. Being multi-year, those
purchases required a different mechanism for approving the contract,
but the contracts can and still do happen. That these multi-year
contacts are in fact not multi-year contracts is certainly going to be
an interesting revelation to the lawyers that drafted them and the
private entities and government folks that signed them. I'd be floored
if the Feds had any less flexibility here than the locals already have.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Stephen Hoffman

Post by Bill Gunshannon
"Cancellation" means the cancellation (within a contractually
specified time) of the total requirements of all remaining
program years.

So your definition of "there are no multi-year contracts" is "there are
multi-year contracts, but they have clauses"? OK.
It's common for commercial contracts to include cancellation clauses,
termination clauses and non-payment clauses, too. Most any cellphone
plan with a subsidy involved will have these. Few private entities
would sign a multi-year contract without those clauses. Which leads me
to wonder what the particular distinction you're drawing here might be.

The distinction is that outside the government contracting world the
default is continuation of the contract and the enforcible requirement
to pay for it or pay penalties for not continuing. With the government
the default is the exact opposite. No one can commit the government to
pay any money beyond the end of the FY because until the new budget is
settled and signed there is no money. Try telling your cell carrier
that your not going to pay your bill from October to December because
you don't have a budget. With government contracting (maybe I should
qualify this, I only have experience with contracting at the Federal
level) you can not commit funds beyond the end of the FY and there can
not be penalties because ----- There would be no budgeted money to
pay them. This is not to say that private contracts can't do this too,
but the norm is for longer term contracts to be let because of the
potential savings in doing so. I know of no business that runs on a
budget system like the US government. They wouldn't stay in business
for very long.

Post by Stephen Hoffman
That the contracts have those clauses by default? Well, um, I've
seen more than a few boiler-plate contracts over the years, some
clearly quite directly copied from contract templates. (Having chatted
with a lawyer on this topic, also which particular clauses should be
struck out and declined during associated negotiations, but that's
fodder for another discussion.)
The local municipality has done multi-year purchases for various items
and very likely will again, and that's hardly unusual. There are
specific requirements set by the state. Being multi-year, those
purchases required a different mechanism for approving the contract,
but the contracts can and still do happen.

I wonder if that's one of the reasons Detroit is in the crapper now?
But, as stated above, all my experience is at the Federal level and
we had it drummed into us that at no time were we to ever even hint
at a government financial committment beyond the end of the FY.

Post by Stephen Hoffman
That these multi-year
contacts are in fact not multi-year contracts is certainly going to be
an interesting revelation to the lawyers that drafted them and the
private entities and government folks that signed them. I'd be floored
if the Feds had any less flexibility here than the locals already have.

Trust me, they do. I can go out now and find lots of "multi-year"
contracts for sales to the government that never went anywhere near
their projected lifespan. Just look back at the sequester. How many
contractors were "furloughed" when the FY ended without a budget. I
am sure they all had long-term contracts but lack of funding always
overrules in Federal contracting. I even have first hand experience.
In 2009 I was busy escorting contractors around the world to do HBSS
installs. In late September we were in Korea. My instructions included
that if there was still a budget impasse on 30 September I was to get
on a plane with my contractors and return to the US regardless of the
status of the install. The reason was that without a budget there would
be no money to pay for any expenses or travel for the contractors who's
contracts would immediately fall into limbo. I was OK cause I was military
and could always jump an Air Force cargo back to the states, but the
contractors would be stranded unless they paid their own way back with
no chance of later reimbursement by the government.



bill

[Bill Gunshannon]

Before this (once again) gets totally out of control, let me make
it clear that all I am trying to do is demonstrate that there are
very likely no mysterious secret VMS contracts with the government
that will rear up to save the day. True long term contracts do not
exist in the Federal government. If there were anything close in
all liklihood they would be with a government contractor and not
with HP thus having no effect what HP does with VMS. The government
having systems does not protect a company from going out of that
business. When I was at West Point, my job was maintaining a
cluster (yes, we had clusters then :-) of Prime 850 minicomputers.
I left in 1988. The Primes were still the primary academic computers
for the Academy. Prime went out of business in 1992. What was it
people were saying about having to maintain production for years
to support government owned systems?

It really is time to face the fact that if you (noone in particular,
the corporate you) were expecting some government contract to force
HP to extend the life of VMS it just isn't going to happen.

bill

[Bill Gunshannon]

OK, in support of my claim that I never said there were no government
VMS systems.....


When I was at West Point, 1980-1988 the only VMS machine I was aware of
was in The Geography & Computer Science Department. It was an 11/750.
I had an account on it and it was my first taste of VMS. It supported
the early Ada compiler and EUNICE. :-)

In doing some research I have found an article that states that in 1990
they had a VAX-8300 in The Department of Geography and VAX-8530 in The
Department of Systems Engineering.

I sent off an email to the head of CS there today. he has a background
with the Academy going back to this period. I have asked him if there
are any VMS systems still there and if not when they went away.

I will report what I hear.

For those who wonder what it would mean, other than giving an idea of
when Department of the Army (and in general, DOD) moved away from VMS,
on another note, think of it along the lines of VMS in Academia.
Unix is where it is today primarily because of all the students who
became familiar with it thru academia. the same was true, to a lesser
extent, I think, for VMS. We already know about when VMS lost its
foothold in academia and the effect that probably had. But in the
case of VMS usage at USMA it was not only future businessmen who
stopped being exposed to it but future planners and managers for
the DOD, by far the largest single piece of the budget in the US
government.

And for those who think making this contact isn't important, MS has a
TWI (Training With Industry) program with DOD. Senior NCOes and Junior
and mid-term Officers get to go and spend a year working on projects
in Redmond. There are similar programs with people like Cisco. I never
heard of any such program for VMS.


bill

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by JF Mezei
And when it did become
public, all it would say was that the change would be transparent to
customers.

And therefore there's no need to inform the customers.

But in reality, they ditched VMS engineering and replaced it with a team
barely capable of doing maintenance, let alone real development. So this
is a material change which HP sought to hide from VMS customers o that
customers would delay the official recognition that VMS was dead.
This recognition came this year, and from now on, HP will likely wish to
accelerate the demise in order to end its liabilities as soon as posisble.
BTW, remember all those claims that DEC, then Compaq and then HP would
honour development of VMS until well beyopnd 2020 in order to meet
military requirements for those big sales they made ? Wonder where those
contracts went.

No government contract runs for more than one year. They may have options
to renew, but it is always depending on budget. Scratch a line from the
budget and a contract ends on September 30th of the current FY. I tried
to tell people here that while there may have been major VMS contracts in
DOD in the past by very early this millenium they are all on their way
out the door. The last DISA STIG Checklist for VMS was in 2006. There
has never been one for an Itanium system. Trying to get DITSCAP/DIACAP
approval for a system not on DISA's favored sons list is more work than
any government employee is likely to be willing to do. I'm willing to
bet that even the academic VMS system at West Point has been gone for at
least 20 years.

bill

[Subcommandante XDelta]

JF Mezei:

...Much good, elided...

Post by JF Mezei
One of the problems with VMS was its isolation. Complaints through
normal channels would never leave the "safe" enclave of VMS/BCS and
never go higher than the BCS manager. That is why you need customers
with an activist CEO capable of bypassing all the "filtration" within HP
ranks and talk direcly to the CEO.

That such an activist CEO could exist. (One may well exist).

In a full page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, as a
conversation starter/opening gambit:

"Dear Ms Whitman, HP CEO,

Do you read here often?"

:

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
...Much good, elided...

Post by JF Mezei
One of the problems with VMS was its isolation. Complaints through
normal channels would never leave the "safe" enclave of VMS/BCS and
never go higher than the BCS manager. That is why you need customers
with an activist CEO capable of bypassing all the "filtration" within HP
ranks and talk direcly to the CEO.

That such an activist CEO could exist. (One may well exist).
In a full page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, as a
"Dear Ms Whitman, HP CEO,
Do you read here often?"

Two questions.....

What makes you think The Wall Street Journal cares?

What makes you think Meg Whitman cares?

bill

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
One big thinker saying "cloud" is a risk,

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
and is not the same thing as mission critical... One political analyst
saying "Obama choosed the wring IT manager" (oups ! I don't know
anything about US politicals, forget it !)....

Apparently don't know a lot about a lot of things. But, lets continue...

He guy, it was a JOKE

I know about your pretention, for sure

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by Bill Gunshannon
It is certainly not that "we must not do anything" as much as you can
do nothing. You don't own it. You don't control it. If HP is not
willing to keep it going, it will die.

And people wonder why no one takes c.o.v denizens seriously....

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Ok. I heard about USA as a free country, and liberal economics as
freedom bases.

Certainly. But, apparently you have a totally different understanding of
what that means than the rest of the world.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
So.
About 4000 customers around te world saying "our supplier is a dumb".

4000 customers in an industry with probably more than 400,000,000
customers? Insignificant. It is even insignificant if you only
looked at the US.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Two or three free analysts saying "this decision is a bug".

Not sure what a "free analyst" is but unless your paying him to say
it none is likely to write anything good about VMS. Analysts don't
follow the rants of people out of touch with reality, they follow
real trends in business.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
About 100000
users saying we think about our security.

As has been pointed out, VMS didn't have the security market cornered.
And 100000 users is still insignificant in a business with several
hundred million users.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
About 1 article in the "wall
street journal" saying "hum, HP stake-holders have buyed the wrong
action, buy Oracle actions".

Why on earth would they say that?

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
One big thinker saying "cloud" is a risk,
and is not the same thing as mission critical... One political analyst
saying "Obama choosed the wring IT manager" (oups ! I don't know
anything about US politicals, forget it !)....

Apparently don't know a lot about a lot of things. But, lets continue...

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
In a free country, with free customers and free market, it is not
possible to act against twenty dumb managers ?

Sure it is. Start your own company and compete against them. But
you don't own VMS and have no say in what its owners want to do with
it. That's one of the tihings that "free" means. HP is "free" to
do whatever it wants with its property regardless of what you think.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
The very name of HP DG is
not Meg Withman, but Joseph Staline ?

Huh? Seems you are the one with Stalinist leanings. You want to force
someone to meet your desires regarding the disposition of their property.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Tell me about that, because I have
to choose my next hollydays, and I thought USA was a good choice, and
for now, I'm in uncertainity.

So, let me get this straight, if Space Mountain is being run by a VAX
with VMS you won't be coming to Disneyland.
bill

Sorry Doctor Bill G. I didn't see you're a professor. A professor has to
give lessons.
lesson 1 : for what reason, we, doctors of VMS were not able to keep it
alive
lesson 2 : for what reason, it is forbiden to DO something for VMS
lesson 3 : I don't care of users, companies, etc,... I'm just a doctor

oups ! I'm just an ignorant, and perhaps two or three years less than
you her Doctor. I apologize daring speaking about life.

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by Bill Gunshannon
It is certainly not that "we must not do anything" as much as you can
do nothing. You don't own it. You don't control it. If HP is not
willing to keep it going, it will die.

And people wonder why no one takes c.o.v denizens seriously....

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Ok. I heard about USA as a free country, and liberal economics as
freedom bases.

Certainly. But, apparently you have a totally different understanding of
what that means than the rest of the world.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
So.
About 4000 customers around te world saying "our supplier is a dumb".

4000 customers in an industry with probably more than 400,000,000
customers? Insignificant. It is even insignificant if you only
looked at the US.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Two or three free analysts saying "this decision is a bug".

Not sure what a "free analyst" is but unless your paying him to say
it none is likely to write anything good about VMS. Analysts don't
follow the rants of people out of touch with reality, they follow
real trends in business.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
About 100000
users saying we think about our security.

As has been pointed out, VMS didn't have the security market cornered.
And 100000 users is still insignificant in a business with several
hundred million users.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
About 1 article in the "wall
street journal" saying "hum, HP stake-holders have buyed the wrong
action, buy Oracle actions".

Why on earth would they say that?

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
One big thinker saying "cloud" is a risk,
and is not the same thing as mission critical... One political analyst
saying "Obama choosed the wring IT manager" (oups ! I don't know
anything about US politicals, forget it !)....

Apparently don't know a lot about a lot of things. But, lets continue...

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
In a free country, with free customers and free market, it is not
possible to act against twenty dumb managers ?

Sure it is. Start your own company and compete against them. But
you don't own VMS and have no say in what its owners want to do with
it. That's one of the tihings that "free" means. HP is "free" to
do whatever it wants with its property regardless of what you think.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
The very name of HP DG is
not Meg Withman, but Joseph Staline ?

Huh? Seems you are the one with Stalinist leanings. You want to force
someone to meet your desires regarding the disposition of their property.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Tell me about that, because I have
to choose my next hollydays, and I thought USA was a good choice, and
for now, I'm in uncertainity.

So, let me get this straight, if Space Mountain is being run by a VAX
with VMS you won't be coming to Disneyland.
bill

You say, her Doctor, I have to respect property.

The bug in your ideas is : VMS is not YOUR property. You think about you
as "le dernier des mohicans", the last knower avout VMS, and the only
thing you can say is : VMS is dead.

You speak about VMS as if it was yours.

And somehow, you are wright. VMS is dying also because of "guru" like
you who were not able to transmit anything to new generations about VMS.

And why were you so impotent in transmiting ? Because you think about
VMS as your (imaginary) property.

And about property issues, you are wright, her Doctor, VMS is not not
your property.

VMS cannt be the propoerty of guys who perfer him dead than in other hands.

I think - I hope, I am not sure - you are able to read something. Have a
look in bible at the Salomon judgment. In this story, herr Doctor, I
think you would be the bad mother.

You say I do not respect other ideas. And what about you ? Do you just
HEAR what is said ? I don't think so.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by Bill Gunshannon

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by Bill Gunshannon
It is certainly not that "we must not do anything" as much as you can
do nothing. You don't own it. You don't control it. If HP is not
willing to keep it going, it will die.

And people wonder why no one takes c.o.v denizens seriously....

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Ok. I heard about USA as a free country, and liberal economics as
freedom bases.

Certainly. But, apparently you have a totally different understanding of
what that means than the rest of the world.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
So.
About 4000 customers around te world saying "our supplier is a dumb".

4000 customers in an industry with probably more than 400,000,000
customers? Insignificant. It is even insignificant if you only
looked at the US.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Two or three free analysts saying "this decision is a bug".

Not sure what a "free analyst" is but unless your paying him to say
it none is likely to write anything good about VMS. Analysts don't
follow the rants of people out of touch with reality, they follow
real trends in business.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
About 100000
users saying we think about our security.

As has been pointed out, VMS didn't have the security market cornered.
And 100000 users is still insignificant in a business with several
hundred million users.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
About 1 article in the "wall
street journal" saying "hum, HP stake-holders have buyed the wrong
action, buy Oracle actions".

Why on earth would they say that?

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
One big thinker saying "cloud" is a risk,
and is not the same thing as mission critical... One political analyst
saying "Obama choosed the wring IT manager" (oups ! I don't know
anything about US politicals, forget it !)....

Apparently don't know a lot about a lot of things. But, lets continue...

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
In a free country, with free customers and free market, it is not
possible to act against twenty dumb managers ?

Sure it is. Start your own company and compete against them. But
you don't own VMS and have no say in what its owners want to do with
it. That's one of the tihings that "free" means. HP is "free" to
do whatever it wants with its property regardless of what you think.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
The very name of HP DG is
not Meg Withman, but Joseph Staline ?

Huh? Seems you are the one with Stalinist leanings. You want to force
someone to meet your desires regarding the disposition of their property.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Tell me about that, because I have
to choose my next hollydays, and I thought USA was a good choice, and
for now, I'm in uncertainity.

So, let me get this straight, if Space Mountain is being run by a VAX
with VMS you won't be coming to Disneyland.
bill

You say, her Doctor, I have to respect property.

First, I have never presented myself as a Doctor. Second, I have never
presented myself as a Professor. I am Sysadmin and have been since the
VAX was still the only processor that ran VMS.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
The bug in your ideas is : VMS is not YOUR property.

I have never said it was. Quite the contrary I have repeatedly stated
who owns it. And that isn't some mythical VMS Community.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
You think about you
as "le dernier des mohicans", the last knower avout VMS, and the only
thing you can say is : VMS is dead.

I didn't say that, HP, the owners of VMS, did.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
You speak about VMS as if it was yours.

See above. I have never done that.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
And somehow, you are wright. VMS is dying also because of "guru" like
you who were not able to transmit anything to new generations about VMS.

Actually, I did. Even after my employers stopped caring. I did until
I was ordered to get the last VMS boxes used for academic purposes out
of my labs and off University property. At least I was able to keep
most of them out of the local landfill which is where they wanted them
to go.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
And why were you so impotent in transmiting ? Because you think about
VMS as your (imaginary) property.

Stop being an idiot.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
And about property issues, you are wright, her Doctor, VMS is not not
your property.
VMS cannt be the propoerty of guys who perfer him dead than in other hands.

On the contrary, it can be and it is. HP owns it and HP has announced
its EOL.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
I think - I hope, I am not sure - you are able to read something. Have a
look in bible at the Salomon judgment. In this story, herr Doctor, I
think you would be the bad mother.

I am nothing but another one of the many who ran VMS systems for a
number of years. I'm not its mother, its father or even its wet nurse.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
You say I do not respect other ideas.

Where did I say that? I don't even know you.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
And what about you ? Do you just
HEAR what is said ? I don't think so.

Yes, I hear what is said. HP, the owner of VMS has announced its EOL.
It was announced loud and clear.

I suspect it is time to just let this drop as I fear your command of the
English language is not up to the task and I can assure my abilties with
French would prove no better.

bill

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
I suspect it is time to just let this drop as I fear your command of the
English language is not up to the task and I can assure my abilties with
French would prove no better.

I agree on that : I don't speak good english, and perhaps you don't know
a word of french.

What is the issue : translating from langage to langage is very
difficult. The best translator has some trouble with idiomatic expressions.

For now HP says to VMS customers : translate from VMS to Non-Stop ! It
is like you and me talking about philosophia or USA story, or french way
of cooking frogs : it could be a little bit difficult, with my english
and your french. I don't say impossible : we are alltogether VMS
friends, so we could want to understand each other. Between VMS and
Non-Stop, or between VMS and Windows 8.1 for enterprise, it could be
rather more difficult.

But HP does believe it : we can sell to our customers easy "transition
solutions". There are around meetings or mailing organized by HP which
introduces us actors in the domain of port (transoft, sector7,...). All
of these speaking a not-so-bad VMS langage (better than my english), but
not-so-good either.

I don't know anything of the future for VMS : I am not a soothsayer. I
know there are a lot of companies, small and big, which are at risk in
this context, and I see HP is not competent in this context. So I think
it is time to do something.

I have not any illusion about results of actions. I know who has VMS
property. But I know if nobody does anything that the story will be
worse. For small companies, HP don't care, and I know some of them would
have their EOL in this context. For big companies, it would be an
argument for their competitors, and big loss of money. For users, there
are risks of loss of services.

I understand very well here, at cov, have been observed the programmed
EOL of VMS for decades. So VMS EOL here is not a surprise. And if
nothing was possible other decades, what can be possible today ?

My point is : there is a difference between progressive decadence and
event of murder. Here, there is some sort of scandal which we can talk
about. And, also, there is a difference between some thing we predict,
and some thing which is here. What we predicted to DG in terms "you are
at risk" is now "you have 2billions dollard to pay for the transition in
six months", it is reality.

VMS EOL announce is a new context (even if we had predicted it). A new
context involves new ideas, new acts.

If I am a little bit angry about cov, it is because I hear a majority of
"nothing new under the sun". Seasons are changing, on the contrary, and
it is time to change our clothing.

[JF Mezei]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
But HP does believe it : we can sell to our customers easy "transition
solutions". There are around meetings or mailing organized by HP which
introduces us actors in the domain of port (transoft, sector7,...). All
of these speaking a not-so-bad VMS langage (better than my english), but
not-so-good either.

Nop. HP's strategy is and has always been clear: keep BCS customers on
as long as possible to continue to get support revenues. This is why HP
never admitted to end of life for Itanium or VMS.

And now that end of life of VMS is basically announced, HP isn't going
to start helping VMS customer migrate quickly because that makes the
loss of that customer quicker. So HP will remain mum, as it has been all
those years.

It is up to customers to wake up, smell the coffee and take action
(migrate to non HP ecosystem).

Relying on proprietary OS means you are at the whim of whatever CEO is
at head of the owning company. He can decide to kill the OS any day if
that quarter's financials don't look good and he needs to provide some
news, any news, to Wall Street Casino Analysts.

Relying on open source OS means that there is nobody to actially make a
decision to kill the OS, which makes that platform more reliable in
terms of longevity.

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <529f684b$0$2042$***@news.free.fr>,
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22G=E9rard_Calliet_=28pia-sofer=29=22?=

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Ok. I heard about USA as a free country, and liberal economics as
freedom bases.

One of the main principles of liberal economics is that who owns
something decides things about it.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
In a free country, with free customers and free market, it is not
possible to act against twenty dumb managers ?

No.

[Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)]

Post by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22G=E9rard_Calliet_=28pia-sofer=29=22?=

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Ok. I heard about USA as a free country, and liberal economics as
freedom bases.

One of the main principles of liberal economics is that who owns
something decides things about it.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
In a free country, with free customers and free market, it is not
possible to act against twenty dumb managers ?

No.

I think it is the word "market" we don't understand the same way. What
would say "rule of supply AND demand" evangelists about it ? What about
the beautifull Adam Smith's "invisible hand of the marketplace" ?

What you say seems to be more adapted to mean age concept of three-part
serf lord and vassal organization.

Or behind your assertion, there is some hidden critic about property ? I
shudder !

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22G=E9rard_Calliet_=28pia-sofer=29=22?=

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
Ok. I heard about USA as a free country, and liberal economics as
freedom bases.

One of the main principles of liberal economics is that who owns
something decides things about it.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
In a free country, with free customers and free market, it is not
possible to act against twenty dumb managers ?

No.

I think it is the word "market" we don't understand the same way.

Oh, I agree with that.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
What
would say "rule of supply AND demand" evangelists about it ?

They would say that the demand has been decreasing over the years
until it reached the point where the ROI is nearly 0 or even minus.
At that point, the product ceases to be supplied. True supply and
demand economics.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
What about
the beautifull Adam Smith's "invisible hand of the marketplace" ?

As far as VMS was concerned, the marketplace withdrew its invisible
hand and the result is the demise of VMS.

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)
What you say seems to be more adapted to mean age concept of three-part
serf lord and vassal organization.
Or behind your assertion, there is some hidden critic about property ? I
shudder !

You really need to do some studying on economics. VMS was a classic
case of supply and demand. While the demand existed VMS thrived. And
the supply was plentiful. You could buy it from its owners or any number
of VAR's. But that demand started dropping. As it dropped, so did supply.
VAR's moved on to other businesses. At this point, the demand is too
small to support any continued supply and the supplier has announced that
they will, in the near future, stop supply entirely.

bill

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer)

Post by JF Mezei
VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

With all the respect I must have with the ancestors, what are you doing
here, in comp.os.VMS, Sir ?
You want to shit VMS ? OK. Do it elsewhere, have a chair with Mister
Bill Gates.

You have a problem with reality?

What is gained by painting a rosy picture when even a blind man can
see the end of the line.

bill

[Subcommandante XDelta]

(WAS: Current VMS Usage Survey)

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Rather agreeing to sell VMS to a consortium composed of the remaining
2000 paying customers, to preserve HPs reputation that they give a damn
about their business customers.

What is left to sell ?
There is no engineering group. The value of VMS (or any OS) lies in the
brains that have enough knowledge/experience to avoid pitfalls such as
buffer overruns, create proper documentation etc. It is all gone.
And apart from restructuring teh source code to allow multi platform and
ease porting, there hasn't been much development in VMS for about 15 years.
Also, remember that Digital donated much of the IP to Microsoft in
exchange for the right to sell Windows. HP ditched attekps to port the
clustering stuff to HP-UX.
At this point in time, I would say that VMS has $0 residual value in
terms of the OS itself. (support business might have some),
VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

Bifurcate! - I decided to fork.

First, a joke from 2008:

Q: What is the capital of Iceland?

A: Reykjavik!

Wrong: It's two Krona.

What is the VMS human capital at HP? - John Egolf and Keith Parris, IIRC
- anybody else?

I do apologise to any of the Indians at VMS HQ, that may be reading
this, no doubt you are highly educated and highly talented, and you may
well have learned to love and respect the inherent quality of the VMS
way, but VMS Engineering you are not; however in a rebooted VMS ECOlogy
there will be demand for skilled VMS professionals.

What else?

A couple of Blu-ray sized backup media should cater for archiving image
backups of all the VMS build and test systems, and all the source code
to VMS and the layered products and documentation, both public and VMS
engineering internal.

Perhaps a shipping container worth of the paper documentation and
internal documentation from all the generations of VMS. The odd bit of
sentimental DEC hardware; and that's about it.

Possibly, perhaps, just tapping in the dark.

Of course there may be endless filing cabinets full of NDAs, but they
can all be rescinded, the paper contracts shredded, piled up, doused in
petrol and burned, the NDAs are not even worth recycling as toilet paper.

I had a bad dream a few nights ago, some sunset scenario, there was this
big funeral pyre of VMS manuals and reams and reams of LP 29 fan-fold
line-printer print-outs of all the VMS source code. Everthing stank of
petrol, there were HP and Microsoft suits all around, with champagne
bottles ready to pop and party streamers ready to pull.

Meg Whitman walks up the funeral pyre and with a nonchalant and
dismissive flick of the wrist throws a match onto the pyre and turns it
into a conflagration of cinders and ashes, no ceremony, no eulogy, no
witnessing, as soon as the match was cast, she turned away without a
backward glance and joined the throng of HP and MS suits, cheering in
celebration at the successful murder and annihilation of an operating
system culture, without penalty.

Microsoft finally killing the father through the Hewlett Packard proxy.

The intellectual heritage of the Digital Equipment Corporation lost to
humanity forever.

Extinguished, extirpated, exterminated, erased.

Luckily that was just a bad dream that I awoke out of, and I am sure I
am not typing this in a waking dream.

VMS is priceless, but what is it worth?

What is a fair price to offer HP for the full source code and
documentation, including all VMS engineering internal documentation and
images of the development and test systems?

Would anyone care to run some numbers?

[Simon Clubley]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
What is a fair price to offer HP for the full source code and
documentation, including all VMS engineering internal documentation and
images of the development and test systems?
Would anyone care to run some numbers?

First, if you want people here to take you seriously, change your
attitude and writing style and pick a grown up alias if you don't wish
to use your real name for some reason.

Second, there's nothing major in the VMS code base which hasn't been
implemented in some form in other environments or doesn't have some other
functional equivalant (if sometimes less elegant) in those other environments.

People have done implementations of the DLM using VMS as a base reference.

There are countless ISAM libraries around.

DCL is nothing to be proud of in the 21st century.

The EDT keypad is available in emacs (I know; I use it daily).

I like the $qio interface, extraction of system state via a API instead of
having to parse command output, and file version support but they are not
something which will be selling points for VMS, because they are noise
level benefits when all the other issues are considered.

Simon.

[Subcommandante XDelta]

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
What is a fair price to offer HP for the full source code and
documentation, including all VMS engineering internal documentation and
images of the development and test systems?
Would anyone care to run some numbers?

First, if you want people here to take you seriously, change your
attitude and writing style and pick a grown up alias if you don't wish
to use your real name for some reason.

Mr Clubley,

I am a part of the VLF (VMS Liberation Front), we have crafted and
released the LiBREVMS LMFGEN PAK generator. We have cracked several
older Stromasys CHARON hardware emulators. As a consequence, anyone can
study the VMS operating system on VAX and AXP without impediment, now
and forever. That is what we have achieved so far, in conserving VMS
from mind-share extinction.

We have transgressed some IP in the process.

Thus in communicating with comp.os.vms we are never going to use our
real names, be realistic. Nor are we going to use realistic pseudonyms,
that could be an actual persons name, that is netiquette and simple
human decency.

The psuedonym/avatar that I use is "Subcommandante XDelta" and my
esteemed VLF colleague uses "Subcommandante BYPASS" and that is that,
(BTW, there are no "Commandantes" in the VLF, and there was only ever
one "Big Commandante"), neither name could ever be interpreted as that
of an actual person.

As for attitude, I cannot recall the VLF ever disrespecting any of the
usual suspects actors in the comp.os.vms colloquey.

The VLF are not providing leadership and do not seek to cultivate
credibility per se. We have messages to transmit, and we so transmit them.

Any message should only be shot down on the basis of the deficit of
inherent merit, and not on the basis of the provenance or credentials of
the messenger, though, modes of representation can be critiqued, as you
have done.

Please refresh your memory of what we stand for:

http://is.gd/VLF_MANiFESTO

Thank you.

Post by Simon Clubley
Second, there's nothing major in the VMS code base which hasn't been
implemented in some form in other environments or doesn't have some other
functional equivalant (if sometimes less elegant) in those other environments.

:-)

You couldn't help put in that rider, "if sometimes less elegant".

One would hope that functionality in the VMS code base has been
implemented elsewhere, apart from VMS championing public standards, it
has been fifteen years down the track in matters computing.

Elegance, efficiency, efficacy, that is what VMS has by the gleaming,
merciless truckload, in how it's various functions and facilities
integrate and mesh, both in function and recovery from dys-function.

Clustering, logical name tables, to cite but two.

And where have those two aspects of VMS ever been functionally
approximated? (Ignoring the in-house TRu64 for clustering).

Post by Simon Clubley
People have done implementations of the DLM using VMS as a base reference.
There are countless ISAM libraries around.
DCL is nothing to be proud of in the 21st century.

It was nothing to be proud of in the 20th century! - and yet, it is
capable of profound elegance, wrangled properly.

Post by Simon Clubley
The EDT keypad is available in emacs (I know; I use it daily).
I like the $qio interface, extraction of system state via a API instead of
having to parse command output, and file version support but they are not

This is the genius of deep-design quality of the VMS architecture;
self-informing nature at every level and layer of operating system
function (as a liminal ideal)

Knowledge and understand of which should never be lost to humanity.

https://www.google.com.au/search?tbm=isch&q=flammarion+woodcut

Post by Simon Clubley
something which will be selling points for VMS, because they are noise
level benefits when all the other issues are considered.

Not to those who need to operate processes or environments that pose
profound risk to life, limb and land upon computing dysfunction.

Post by Simon Clubley
Simon.

Not playing games of "last word" by the way. If the annals of the
transactions of the comp.os.vms collegiate are testament to anything,
then at the very least, it is that there is no such thing as the "last
word". :-)

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
I am a part of the VLF (VMS Liberation Front), we have crafted and
released the LiBREVMS LMFGEN PAK generator. We have cracked several
older Stromasys CHARON hardware emulators. As a consequence, anyone can
study the VMS operating system on VAX and AXP without impediment, now
and forever. That is what we have achieved so far, in conserving VMS
from mind-share extinction.
We have transgressed some IP in the process.

Which means that no-one can go public with any of your stuff. Stealth
marketing? Stupidity?

Remember what happened to the PDP hobbyist licenses? Want that to
happen to VMS?

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
I am a part of the VLF (VMS Liberation Front), we have crafted and
released the LiBREVMS LMFGEN PAK generator. We have cracked several
older Stromasys CHARON hardware emulators. As a consequence, anyone can
study the VMS operating system on VAX and AXP without impediment, now
and forever. That is what we have achieved so far, in conserving VMS
from mind-share extinction.
We have transgressed some IP in the process.

Which means that no-one can go public with any of your stuff. Stealth
marketing? Stupidity?
Remember what happened to the PDP hobbyist licenses? Want that to
happen to VMS?

Can someone send me a scan of the complete license agreement that comes
with a real commercial PAK. I would love to read what the whole agreement
(including small print) actually says.

bill

[Subcommandante XDelta]

(WAS: Current VMS Usage Survey)

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Rather agreeing to sell VMS to a consortium composed of the remaining
2000 paying customers, to preserve HPs reputation that they give a damn
about their business customers.

What is left to sell ?
There is no engineering group. The value of VMS (or any OS) lies in the
brains that have enough knowledge/experience to avoid pitfalls such as
buffer overruns, create proper documentation etc. It is all gone.
And apart from restructuring teh source code to allow multi platform and
ease porting, there hasn't been much development in VMS for about 15 years.
Also, remember that Digital donated much of the IP to Microsoft in
exchange for the right to sell Windows. HP ditched attekps to port the
clustering stuff to HP-UX.
At this point in time, I would say that VMS has $0 residual value in
terms of the OS itself. (support business might have some),
VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

Bifurcate! - I decided to fork.

First, a joke from 2008:

Q: What is the capital of Iceland?

A: Reykjavik!

Wrong: It's two Krona.

What is the VMS human capital at HP? - John Egolf and Keith Parris, IIRC
- anybody else?

I do apologise to any of the Indians at VMS HQ, that may be reading
this, no doubt you are highly educated and highly talented, and you may
well have learned to love and respect the inherent quality of the VMS
way, but VMS Engineering you are not; however in a rebooted VMS ECOlogy
there will be demand for skilled VMS professionals.

What else?

A couple of Blu-ray sized backup media should cater for archiving image
backups of all the VMS build and test systems, and all the source code
to VMS and the layered products and documentation, both public and VMS
engineering internal.

Perhaps a shipping container worth of the paper documentation and
internal documentation from all the generations of VMS. The odd bit of
sentimental DEC hardware; and that's about it.

Possibly, perhaps, just tapping in the dark.

Of course there may be endless filing cabinets full of NDAs, but they
can all be rescinded, the paper contracts shredded, piled up, doused in
petrol and burned, the NDAs are not even worth recycling as toilet paper.

I had a bad dream a few nights ago, some sunset scenario, there was this
big funeral pyre of VMS manuals and reams and reams of LP 29 fan-fold
line-printer print-outs of all the VMS source code. Everthing stank of
petrol, there were HP and Microsoft suits all around, with champagne
bottles ready to pop and party streamers ready to pull.

Meg Whitman walks up the funeral pyre and with a nonchalant and
dismissive flick of the wrist throws a match onto the pyre and turns it
into a conflagration of cinders and ashes, no ceremony, no eulogy, no
witnessing, as soon as the match was cast, she turned away without a
backward glance and joined the throng of HP and MS suits, cheering in
celebration at the successful murder and annihilation of an operating
system culture, without penalty.

Microsoft finally killing the father through the Hewlett Packard proxy.

The intellectual heritage of the Digital Equipment Corporation lost to
humanity forever.

Extinguished, extirpated, exterminated, erased.

Luckily that was just a bad dream that I awoke out of, and I am sure I
am not typing this in a waking dream.

VMS is priceless, but what is it worth?

What is a fair price to offer HP for the full source code and
documentation, including all VMS engineering internal documentation and
images of the development and test systems?

Would anyone care to run some numbers?

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
(WAS: Current VMS Usage Survey)

Post by JF Mezei

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Rather agreeing to sell VMS to a consortium composed of the remaining
2000 paying customers, to preserve HPs reputation that they give a damn
about their business customers.

What is left to sell ?
There is no engineering group. The value of VMS (or any OS) lies in the
brains that have enough knowledge/experience to avoid pitfalls such as
buffer overruns, create proper documentation etc. It is all gone.
And apart from restructuring teh source code to allow multi platform and
ease porting, there hasn't been much development in VMS for about 15 years.
Also, remember that Digital donated much of the IP to Microsoft in
exchange for the right to sell Windows. HP ditched attekps to port the
clustering stuff to HP-UX.
At this point in time, I would say that VMS has $0 residual value in
terms of the OS itself. (support business might have some),
VMS is an antique OS that has been stagnant for many many years. Along
the likes of Tru64, MPE, Data General's AOS/VS etc.

Bifurcate! - I decided to fork.
Q: What is the capital of Iceland?
A: Reykjavik!
Wrong: It's two Krona.
What is the VMS human capital at HP? - John Egolf and Keith Parris, IIRC
- anybody else?
I do apologise to any of the Indians at VMS HQ, that may be reading
this, no doubt you are highly educated and highly talented, and you may
well have learned to love and respect the inherent quality of the VMS
way, but VMS Engineering you are not; however in a rebooted VMS ECOlogy
there will be demand for skilled VMS professionals.
What else?
A couple of Blu-ray sized backup media should cater for archiving image
backups of all the VMS build and test systems, and all the source code
to VMS and the layered products and documentation, both public and VMS
engineering internal.
Perhaps a shipping container worth of the paper documentation and
internal documentation from all the generations of VMS. The odd bit of
sentimental DEC hardware; and that's about it.
Possibly, perhaps, just tapping in the dark.
Of course there may be endless filing cabinets full of NDAs, but they
can all be rescinded, the paper contracts shredded, piled up, doused in
petrol and burned, the NDAs are not even worth recycling as toilet paper.
I had a bad dream a few nights ago, some sunset scenario, there was this
big funeral pyre of VMS manuals and reams and reams of LP 29 fan-fold
line-printer print-outs of all the VMS source code. Everthing stank of
petrol, there were HP and Microsoft suits all around, with champagne
bottles ready to pop and party streamers ready to pull.
Meg Whitman walks up the funeral pyre and with a nonchalant and
dismissive flick of the wrist throws a match onto the pyre and turns it
into a conflagration of cinders and ashes, no ceremony, no eulogy, no
witnessing, as soon as the match was cast, she turned away without a
backward glance and joined the throng of HP and MS suits, cheering in
celebration at the successful murder and annihilation of an operating
system culture, without penalty.
Microsoft finally killing the father through the Hewlett Packard proxy.
The intellectual heritage of the Digital Equipment Corporation lost to
humanity forever.
Extinguished, extirpated, exterminated, erased.
Luckily that was just a bad dream that I awoke out of, and I am sure I
am not typing this in a waking dream.
VMS is priceless, but what is it worth?
What is a fair price to offer HP for the full source code and
documentation, including all VMS engineering internal documentation and
images of the development and test systems?
Would anyone care to run some numbers?

I must have missed the announcement where they said VMS was for sale.

bill

[David Froble]

Post by Bill Gunshannon
I must have missed the announcement where they said VMS was for sale.
bill

You don't have to see a "for sale" sign on a house that you really like
in order to "make an offer".

Or you could be like the Israelies and just bring in a bulldozer,
problem solved ....

[Bill Gunshannon]

Post by David Froble

Post by Bill Gunshannon
I must have missed the announcement where they said VMS was for sale.

You don't have to see a "for sale" sign on a house that you really like
in order to "make an offer".

That's true, and the owner doesn't have to take you seriously either.

Post by David Froble
Or you could be like the Israelies and just bring in a bulldozer,
problem solved ....

Remember what the Russians did when Napolean was approaching Moscow?

bill

[Michael Kraemer]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
VMS is priceless, but what is it worth?

It's not for sale.
If you want to do it a favor:
call your two-man liberation army to arms,
rob a few banks,
and buy several ten thousand VMS/Itanic boxen
each and every year.
Maybe this will make HP rethink their roadmap.

[Subcommandante XDelta]

Post by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply

Post by Subcommandante XDelta

Post by Michael Kraemer

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.

that's - maybe - the number of *systems* still standing around somewhere.
The number of *customers* was estimated by HP to be 2000 round-about,
Iirc this figure was quoted here a couple of months ago.
Paying customers, that is, and these are the only important ones,
from HP's point of view.
The latter figure also is in better agreement
with the estimated $30M of revenue VMS creates.
$15000/a per customer on average seems
more likely than just $300/a (or are support contracts
that cheap these days?)

Going with those figures - 100,000 VMS shops; but only 2000 paying
customers, for the sake of argument.

No-one said 100,000 SHOPS, but rather 100,000 SYSTEMS. Suppose a paying
customer has 50 systems (seems like a good average to me), then the
numbers are compatible.

OK, getting closer to a best estimate of the actual state of affairs of
the VMS ECOlogy, from my questionable stab/tapping in the dark. :-)

Circa 2000 paying shops in charge of PPP number of systems, employing
VVV VMS literate professionals.

Circa NNN non-paying shops in charge of QQQ number of systems, employing
MMM VMS literate professionals.

All parameters of great interest to VAR, ISV, COTS, OEM, software
developers, service providers and VMS professionals at a loose end.

[j***@yahoo.co.uk]

Post by Subcommandante XDelta
(Was: Re: READ and WRITE vs. SEARCH/OUTPUT)

On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 03:46:45 -0800 (PST), Keith Cayemberg

There are many examples of OpenVMS being used for Real-Time
applications, especially apps that required resources beyond the
capabilities of embedded systems at the time. To my knowledge the
Flight Control System governing the entire North Atlantic airspace and
based in Iceland is still running on OpenVMS. There are also several
radar systems, military communication systems and satellite control
systems running on OpenVMS.

May we assume that some of the VMS userbase, at least, would have
strong opinions about the extinction of VMS if they knew it was on the
drawing board?

Mr Mezel, in a recent conversation thread, estimated, IIRC (senior
moments notwithstanding), that the remaining VMS end-user population
might be circa 100,000 shops.
So this topic is not about who or what those shops are, but rather what
those shops are using VMS for.
Port the FCS cited above to NSK from VMS, with new generations of
Bohrbugs and Heisenbugs to iron out? - not bloody likely.

There's another reason why NSK is irrelevant to some VMS systems.

NSK is fundamentally a "transactional" view of the world: start transaction,
read some stuff, do some magick, write updated values back(?), end transaction.
Transactions succeed or fail atomically (just as they do on any other
conceptually similar database system). That's the high level model.

VMS can do the transaction stuff, especially when accompanied by databases,
RTR, all that good stuff.

VMS can also do multiple other classes of application that don't really do
transactions in the NSK way. Whether these applications *could* be redesigned
to do that is currently irrelevant, currently they use shared memory, networks,
ASTs, and the rich runtime environment that allows folk to run both the
realtime control and the database stuff on one pair of (failsafe, loadsharing,
not necessarily clustered) boxes. Moving such a long-lifetime setup to NSK
isn't going to happen: (1) the programming model isn't appropriate for a
cost-effective and trustworthy port (2) the current OS owner isn't trustworthy
as the long term owner of an essential component of your business.

There's trivia like XD Ada in this picture too - that's not going to work on
NSK. Yes there's gcc/Gnat, but when you have a flight certified setup,
re-certifying at some vendor's (ie HP's) whim isn't going to win the vendor any
friends.

Fortunately for HP the number of systems in this picture is quite small.

On the other hand, for a business largely focussed on VMS, the number of
systems involved (and more importantly the money involved) might be worth a
second look.

In much the same way as a VW car dealer network wouldn't be interested in
selling light commercial vehicles because they don't understand either the
light commercial vehicle products or the markets, and in particular the
differences between the two. But sell the identical light commercial vehicle in
somewhere that does understand the market, and suddenly it's a commercial
success again. (thanks to, if I remember rightly, Paul Sture for fleshing out
my cars vs minibuses 'hypothetical' with an actual real world recent history
example - sorry Paul, Google Groups search has been 'improved' so much I can't
quickly find the post in question).

Have a lot of fun.