English version of the meeting notes:

https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/CR-rdv-31-janv-2023-EN.pdf

Rest of the material from the presentations:

https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/rdv-31-jan-2023/

On 2/18/2023 3:41 AM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> English version of the meeting notes:
>
> https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/CR-rdv-31-janv-2023-EN.pdf

Good news about license.

And a status for x86-64 that matches previous message:

<quote>
On the development tools side, native C, C++ and Fortran compilers should
arrive soon, followed by Basic, Pascal and Cobol with a lower priority.

The debugger is under test and should arrive with v9.2-1.
....
The v9.2-1 delivery is announced for the first half of 2023. The
strategic goal
is sufficient stability to allow customers and ISVs to port their
applications to
x86. It should support AMD processors, offer better performance, most
native compilers, new documentation and a Beta version of OpenJDK.
</quote>

And Oracle status:

<quote>
The 11.2.0.4 version of the Oracle Enterprise database is the last one to be
supported on VMS and as such, potentially subject to a particular long-term
support policy (Market Driven Support).

For the Rdb family of tools, version 7.4 has Premier support until December
2025 and is recommended to all Rdb users.

There were questions about the Oracle VMS client that allows access to
remote databases. This client is not currently planned for VMS x86, the
priority of developments and ports being given to Rdb.
</quote>

Arne

On 2/18/2023 5:41 AM, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>> English version of the meeting notes:
>
> The license news is good. The ADA news is not, but is hardly unexpected.

And I think it is worth noting that VSI did not drop Ada. That happended
way before VSI.

I believe DEC/Compaq dropped Ada sometime back in the 90's.

(instead ACT had Ada for VMS - and ACT later dropped VMS as platform.)

Getting the current VSI maintained compilers on VMS x86-64 are
"must haves".

When that is achieved they will need to look at the "nice to have"
list.

And honestly I don't see Ada make the cut.

Ada is a technical very interesting language but business wise it has
it best years behind it.

I see other stuff being way more relevant business wise:
* improving Python on VMS
* improving PHP on VMS
* get node.js running on VMS (either V8 or GraalVM)
* get .NET running on VMS
(maybe even Go, Rust and R)

> Bare metal is a question of market segments, as far as I understand it.
> Enterprise IT shops in the US tend to be strongly in favour of
> virtualising everything. What is the compelling use case for bare metal?
>
> The costs of bare metal are considerable, since x86 hardware has a vast
> range of designs. There are probably 50-100 times more x86-64 server
> designs than the total numbers of Alpha and Itanium server designs
> produced by DEC, Compaq and HP for running VMS. Supporting it requires
> writing enormous numbers of VMS device drivers, a skill that is not at
> all common today. The VSI staff who can do it can do other things which
> will be more valuable to the company.
>
> Running under virtualisation needs only a few VMS device drivers. The
> actual hardware is managed by device drivers for the virtualisation
> software. Those are written by the hardware manufacturers so that
> virtualisation software can be run on their machines. Those hardware
> manufacturers are not going to start writing VMS device drivers unless
> VMS becomes /much/ more widely used.
>
> This view may seem negative, but it reflects the commercial reality that
> VSI need to cope with.

Absolutely correct.

VMS on VM's meet 80% of customers need for 20% of the cost.

Obvious priority.

Arne

In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>(Jan-Erik S�derholm) wrote:
>
>> English version of the meeting notes:
>
>The license news is good. [snip]

Meh.

I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
in order to survive in the 00's).

Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.

- Dan C.

Dan Cross wrote:

>
> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
> in order to survive in the 00's).
>

what exactly did IBM opensource in the 00's?
MVS? AIX? i? the Tivoli stuff?

On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>>> English version of the meeting notes:
>>
>> The license news is good. [snip]
>
> Meh.
>
> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen,

The general assumption is that VSI can't do that as
they don't own VMS - HPE does.

> and
> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
> in order to survive in the 00's).

IBM did not open source its OS'es. They still make
money selling licenses.

IBM has become a huge general IT consulting
company competing with DXC, CGI, Accenture,
Cap Gemini, TCS, InfoSys, HCL etc..

But it is far from obvious that it would make any
sense for VSI to go that route. It is a very
crowded field - and big companies has huge advantages
when bidding on the big and lucrative contracts.

> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.

So the suggestion for VSI on how to prevent the
license revenue from decreasing slightly every year
is to let license revenue drop to zero immediately.

I don't think they will buy into that.

Arne

In article <k5crhdFroqeU1@mid.individual.net>,
Michael Kraemer @ home <M.Kraemer@gsi.de> wrote:
>Dan Cross wrote:
>> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
>> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
>> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
>> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
>> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
>> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
>> in order to survive in the 00's).
>
>what exactly did IBM opensource in the 00's?
>MVS? AIX? i? the Tivoli stuff?

JFS, a bunch of stuff that went into Linux, etc, etc,
etc. More importantly, they embraced consulting and
services, which arguably saved them.

- Dan C.

In article <tsrdl6$4bfn$1@dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
>> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>>> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>>> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>>>> English version of the meeting notes:
>>>
>>> The license news is good. [snip]
>>
>> Meh.
>>
>> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
>> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
>> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
>> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen,
>
>The general assumption is that VSI can't do that as
>they don't own VMS - HPE does.

Which is why they should start working with HPE now
to make it happen. Sun didn't own SVR4; AT&T did.
Yet somehow OpenSolaris happened.

>> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
>> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
>> in order to survive in the 00's).
>
>IBM did not open source its OS'es. They still make
>money selling licenses.

AIX is dead, replaced by Linux as far as IBM is
concerned. While they do make some money on the
mainframe and iSeries side from licensing, they
make significantly more money selling consulting
and services.

>IBM has become a huge general IT consulting
>company competing with DXC, CGI, Accenture,
>Cap Gemini, TCS, InfoSys, HCL etc..
>
>But it is far from obvious that it would make any
>sense for VSI to go that route. It is a very
>crowded field - and big companies has huge advantages
>when bidding on the big and lucrative contracts.

It worked for RedHat, which was bought for 34
billion USD. By IBM.

>> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
>> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
>> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>
>So the suggestion for VSI on how to prevent the
>license revenue from decreasing slightly every year
>is to let license revenue drop to zero immediately.

No. The suggestion is to pivot into consulting
and services around an open source OS, following
the RedHat model.

>I don't think they will buy into that.

Then VMS is doomed: it's that simple.

- Dan C.

On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>>
>>> English version of the meeting notes:
>>
>> The license news is good. [snip]
>
> Meh.
>
> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
> in order to survive in the 00's).
>
> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>
> - Dan C.
>

What benefits do you imagine for VSI, for customers, if VSI were to do what you
suggest. Talking about the "open source" issue. That ignores the fact that
they do not have the right to do so, at least with what they got from HP. I've
read that what VSI produces is theirs, and they could do whatever they want with
it. We're pretty sure that any of the Macro-32 and Bliss code isn't from VSI.
But my primary question, what benefits do you see of "open source"?

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

On 2/18/2023 4:01 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <tsrdl6$4bfn$1@dont-email.me>,
> Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> IBM has become a huge general IT consulting
>> company competing with DXC, CGI, Accenture,
>> Cap Gemini, TCS, InfoSys, HCL etc..
>>
>> But it is far from obvious that it would make any
>> sense for VSI to go that route. It is a very
>> crowded field - and big companies has huge advantages
>> when bidding on the big and lucrative contracts.
>
> It worked for RedHat, which was bought for 34
> billion USD. By IBM.

Redhat did not go into general consulting like
IBM did.

Redhat went into open source support. Very different
business.

>>> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
>>> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
>>> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>>
>> So the suggestion for VSI on how to prevent the
>> license revenue from decreasing slightly every year
>> is to let license revenue drop to zero immediately.
>
> No. The suggestion is to pivot into consulting
> and services around an open source OS, following
> the RedHat model.

Redhat is/was doing fine.

But there are a few things to remember before
considering VSI going that path.

1) Redhat is doing fine delivering support service. But
they may have done even better if they could also have
charged real license fees, but they cannot because
they mostly did not create the products and the products
are typical under GPL or LGPL. VSI can and do sell
licenses.

2) Redhat doing fine delivering support service benefits
significantly from two facts:
- other companies and volunteers are doing the majority
of the maintenance work on the products they offer
support on
- the products are widely used products, so even
relative low prices generate a lot of of revenue
Neither will be the case for VSI.

Arne

On 2/18/2023 4:15 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
>> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>>> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>>> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>>>
>>>> English version of the meeting notes:
>>>
>>> The license news is good. [snip]
>>
>> Meh.
>>
>> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
>> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license.  VSI
>> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
>> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
>> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
>> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
>> in order to survive in the 00's).
>>
>> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
>> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
>> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>
> What benefits do you imagine for VSI, for customers, if VSI were to do
> what you suggest.  Talking about the "open source" issue.  That ignores
> the fact that they do not have the right to do so, at least with what
> they got from HP.  I've read that what VSI produces is theirs, and they
> could do whatever they want with it.  We're pretty sure that any of the
> Macro-32 and Bliss code isn't from VSI. But my primary question, what
> benefits do you see of "open source"?

The most successful OS (Linux) is open source, so
the idea that open sourcing is good is pretty
easy to get.

But the problem is that open sourcing VMS would
not bring it on the same path as Linux. The context
is too different.

Arne

In article <tsrfpl$4bfn$2@dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 2/18/2023 4:01 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <tsrdl6$4bfn$1@dont-email.me>,
>> Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> IBM has become a huge general IT consulting
>>> company competing with DXC, CGI, Accenture,
>>> Cap Gemini, TCS, InfoSys, HCL etc..
>>>
>>> But it is far from obvious that it would make any
>>> sense for VSI to go that route. It is a very
>>> crowded field - and big companies has huge advantages
>>> when bidding on the big and lucrative contracts.
>>
>> It worked for RedHat, which was bought for 34
>> billion USD. By IBM.
>
>Redhat did not go into general consulting like
>IBM did.

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

>Redhat went into open source support. Very different
>business.

Note I said both service _and_ consulting.

>>>> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
>>>> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
>>>> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>>>
>>> So the suggestion for VSI on how to prevent the
>>> license revenue from decreasing slightly every year
>>> is to let license revenue drop to zero immediately.
>>
>> No. The suggestion is to pivot into consulting
>> and services around an open source OS, following
>> the RedHat model.
>
>Redhat is/was doing fine.

Yes, they sure are.

>But there are a few things to remember before
>considering VSI going that path.
>
>1) Redhat is doing fine delivering support service. But
> they may have done even better if they could also have
> charged real license fees, but they cannot because
> they mostly did not create the products and the products
> are typical under GPL or LGPL. VSI can and do sell
> licenses.

RedHat got started when the commercial Unix vendors, who did
charge for software, were still in their prime. Which among
them are still selling licenses?

The salient characteristic here is that competition from
operating systems available gratis undercut the market.

>2) Redhat doing fine delivering support service benefits
> significantly from two facts:
> - other companies and volunteers are doing the majority
> of the maintenance work on the products they offer
> support on

What percentage of commits to the Linux git repository come
from authors with an `@redhat.com` email address? How many of
those are for major subsystems? For example, KVM's primary
maintainer is at RedHat.

Moreoever, this sort of ecosystem doesn't exist around VMS
right now because it simply cannot.

> - the products are widely used products, so even
> relative low prices generate a lot of of revenue
> Neither will be the case for VSI.

Yes. Because insistence on an outdated licensing
and revenue model is strangling adoption.

- Dan C.

Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>In article <k5crhdFroqeU1@mid.individual.net>,
>Michael Kraemer @ home <M.Kraemer@gsi.de> wrote:
>>Dan Cross wrote:
>>> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
>>> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
>>> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
>>> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
>>> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
>>> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
>>> in order to survive in the 00's).
>>
>>what exactly did IBM opensource in the 00's?
>>MVS? AIX? i? the Tivoli stuff?
>
>JFS, a bunch of stuff that went into Linux, etc, etc,
>etc. More importantly, they embraced consulting and
>services, which arguably saved them.

It was a long time ago when T.J. Watson Jr. said that "IBM is not a
computer company-- IBM is a business solutions company." IBM really
never did make their billions selling hardware; if they were in the
hardware business they would have been creamed by the competition.
They just made hardware for their business solutions.

IBM -did- provide a lot of support for the open source movement in
the post-2000 era. But they also provided a lot of open source way
back in the seventies like the IBM Scientific Subroutines Package
which you could run on any computer (but which was optimized for the
360).
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article <tsrf3b$4krc$1@dont-email.me>,
Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
>> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>>> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>>> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>>>
>>>> English version of the meeting notes:
>>>
>>> The license news is good. [snip]
>>
>> Meh.
>>
>> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
>> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
>> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
>> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
>> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
>> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
>> in order to survive in the 00's).
>>
>> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
>> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
>> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>
>What benefits do you imagine for VSI, for customers,
>if VSI were to do what you suggest. Talking about
>the "open source" issue.

Establishment of a developer ecosystem, crowd-sourced fixes for
bugs, security auditing, and ensuring the longevity of the
software by no longer tying its existence to a very small
company that las recently laying off engineers.

In the meanwhile, VSI can dedicate itself to a long-term
lucrative business model that, realistically speaking if
they're talking about expanding the customer base at all,
they'll have to lean into anyway.

>That ignores the fact that they do not have the right to
>do so, at least with what they got from HP.

You quoted the part of my message that read that they should
begin, "doing the necessary legal work to make that happen."
Obviously this has not yet happened. That does not mean they
should not be working to make it possible.

>I've
>read that what VSI produces is theirs, and they could do whatever they want with
>it. We're pretty sure that any of the Macro-32 and Bliss code isn't from VSI.

Sounds like something lawyers should start talking about. Again
I point to the model of what Sun microsystems was able to do
with open sourcing a System V Unix variant.

>But my primary question, what benefits do you see of "open source"?

Let me turn this around on you: what do you see as the benefits
of a closed-source, for-pay licensing model? How does that
drive sales and benefit customers? How many margin dollars do
they anticipate to make on licensing?

- Dan C.

In article <tsrg9t$4bfn$3@dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>[snip]
>But the problem is that open sourcing VMS would
>not bring it on the same path as Linux. The context
>is too different.

In true USENET fashion, this has been well hashed in this
newsgroup before. But to recap, it's a question of risk
analysis with respect to what is going to drive new use:
adopting a closed-source, proprietary operating system with
time-expiring licensed, maintained by a very small company
that's been laying off engineers in the middle of a
decades-past-due port to the currently dominant hardware platform
(nevermind that the industry is starting to look really hard at
ARM, by the way), leading to legitimate questions about its
long-term viability, or adopting an open-source operating system
backed by a specialized consulting and services firm?

By all indications, VSI is (unfortunately) trying to cater to a
market that no longer exists outside of a few legacy use cases.
That's just not enough for long-term viability.

- Dan C.

On 2/18/2023 5:08 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <tsrf3b$4krc$1@dont-email.me>,
> Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
>>> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>>>> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> English version of the meeting notes:
>>>>
>>>> The license news is good. [snip]
>>>
>>> Meh.
>>>
>>> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
>>> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
>>> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
>>> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
>>> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
>>> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
>>> in order to survive in the 00's).
>>>
>>> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
>>> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
>>> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>>
>> What benefits do you imagine for VSI, for customers,
>> if VSI were to do what you suggest. Talking about
>> the "open source" issue.
>
> Establishment of a developer ecosystem, crowd-sourced fixes for
> bugs, security auditing, and ensuring the longevity of the
> software by no longer tying its existence to a very small
> company that las recently laying off engineers.
>
> In the meanwhile, VSI can dedicate itself to a long-term
> lucrative business model that, realistically speaking if
> they're talking about expanding the customer base at all,
> they'll have to lean into anyway.
>
>> That ignores the fact that they do not have the right to
>> do so, at least with what they got from HP.
>
> You quoted the part of my message that read that they should
> begin, "doing the necessary legal work to make that happen."
> Obviously this has not yet happened. That does not mean they
> should not be working to make it possible.
>
>> I've
>> read that what VSI produces is theirs, and they could do whatever they want with
>> it. We're pretty sure that any of the Macro-32 and Bliss code isn't from VSI.
>
> Sounds like something lawyers should start talking about. Again
> I point to the model of what Sun microsystems was able to do
> with open sourcing a System V Unix variant.
>
>> But my primary question, what benefits do you see of "open source"?
>
> Let me turn this around on you: what do you see as the benefits
> of a closed-source, for-pay licensing model? How does that
> drive sales and benefit customers? How many margin dollars do
> they anticipate to make on licensing?

Today, I do not see any benefits, and I do see some downside, to the for-pay
licensing model. Nor have I seen such for some years now.

I may have mentioned in the past that I think VMS should be free to use, with
mandatory support for commercial use. I learned long ago that recurring revenue
sure beats one-time revenue.

Thing is, VMS could do without licensing fees, and doesn't need to be open
source to do so. Two different things. So, again, I ask, what benefits might
open source provide. Not much that I can see.

I'm not sure that VSI can finish the port without the added income of license
fees. Don't know.

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

In article <tsrl70$5dop$1@dont-email.me>,
Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>On 2/18/2023 5:08 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <tsrf3b$4krc$1@dont-email.me>,
>> Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>>> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
>>>> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>>>>> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> English version of the meeting notes:
>>>>>
>>>>> The license news is good. [snip]
>>>>
>>>> Meh.
>>>>
>>>> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
>>>> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
>>>> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
>>>> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen, and
>>>> then pivot to consulting and services (honestly: this is
>>>> what DEC should have done, and it's largely what IBM did
>>>> in order to survive in the 00's).
>>>>
>>>> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
>>>> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
>>>> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>>>
>>> What benefits do you imagine for VSI, for customers,
>>> if VSI were to do what you suggest. Talking about
>>> the "open source" issue.
>>
>> Establishment of a developer ecosystem, crowd-sourced fixes for
>> bugs, security auditing, and ensuring the longevity of the
>> software by no longer tying its existence to a very small
>> company that las recently laying off engineers.
>>
>> In the meanwhile, VSI can dedicate itself to a long-term
>> lucrative business model that, realistically speaking if
>> they're talking about expanding the customer base at all,
>> they'll have to lean into anyway.
>>
>>> That ignores the fact that they do not have the right to
>>> do so, at least with what they got from HP.
>>
>> You quoted the part of my message that read that they should
>> begin, "doing the necessary legal work to make that happen."
>> Obviously this has not yet happened. That does not mean they
>> should not be working to make it possible.
>>
>>> I've
>>> read that what VSI produces is theirs, and they could do whatever they want with
>>> it. We're pretty sure that any of the Macro-32 and Bliss code isn't from VSI.
>>
>> Sounds like something lawyers should start talking about. Again
>> I point to the model of what Sun microsystems was able to do
>> with open sourcing a System V Unix variant.
>>
>>> But my primary question, what benefits do you see of "open source"?
>>
>> Let me turn this around on you: what do you see as the benefits
>> of a closed-source, for-pay licensing model? How does that
>> drive sales and benefit customers? How many margin dollars do
>> they anticipate to make on licensing?
>
>Today, I do not see any benefits, and I do see some downside, to the for-pay
>licensing model. Nor have I seen such for some years now.
>
>I may have mentioned in the past that I think VMS should be free to use, with
>mandatory support for commercial use. I learned long ago that recurring revenue
>sure beats one-time revenue.
>
>Thing is, VMS could do without licensing fees, and doesn't need to be open
>source to do so. Two different things. So, again, I ask, what benefits might
>open source provide. Not much that I can see.

As I said above:

Establishment of a developer ecosystem, crowd-sourced fixes
for bugs, security auditing, and ensuring the longevity of
the software by no longer tying its existence to a very
small company that las recently laying off engineers.

It's also a matter of risk management. If I do not have the
source code, how can I ensure that the continued longevity of
the software should VSI fail in the market?

As other vendors have discovered, it is _more_ lucrative to give
the operating system away than to hold it close to the vest.

As to the idea of keeping it closed-source and proprietary, but
freely available, two relatively-recent counter-examples are
BeOS and NeXTStep (and then OpenStep). One could argue that the
latter lives on in macOS, but note that at least the core kernel
there is open source.

Interesting and superior technology always loses relative to
simple economics. Linux is available gratis; VMS is not. Ergo,
VMS cannot compete. 30 years ago, Linux was strictly worse than
VMS in every measurable way; now the inverse is true. This is
not an accident; economics dictate that proprietary will always
lose going forward.

>I'm not sure that VSI can finish the port without the added income of license
>fees. Don't know.

That's a fair point. Note in my original post I said that VSI
should complete the x86_64 port and _then_ figure out how to
open source the OS and pivot to consulting and services.

- Dan C.

On Sat, 2023-02-18 at 14:30 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> And honestly I don't see Ada make the cut.

I don't think that will be an issue, as the GNU compiler suite has
that, and once it's been ported, that will be good enough.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On Sat, 2023-02-18 at 14:09 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> It should support AMD processors

YESSSSS!

By the many flavoured Ghods, that's great news!
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 2/18/2023 4:01 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <tsrdl6$4bfn$1@dont-email.me>,
> Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 2/18/2023 3:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>> In article <memo.20230218104100.11588B@jgd.cix.co.uk>,
>>> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> In article <tsq2vo$3utev$1@dont-email.me>, jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com
>>>> (Jan-Erik Söderholm) wrote:
>>>>> English version of the meeting notes:
>>>>
>>>> The license news is good. [snip]
>>>
>>> Meh.
>>>
>>> I'll be blunt: the only reasonable path for VMS to survive
>>> is to open source it under an OSI-approved license. VSI
>>> should dedicated itself to finishing the x86_64 port and
>>> doing the necessary legal work to make that happen,
>>
>> The general assumption is that VSI can't do that as
>> they don't own VMS - HPE does.
>
> Which is why they should start working with HPE now
> to make it happen. Sun didn't own SVR4; AT&T did.
> Yet somehow OpenSolaris happened.

At that time the SCO group owned it.

But yes somehow they managed to make it happen.

Maybe SUN had some extra rights because they were
part of the development of SVR4. Maybe the fact that
SUN was way bigger than the SCO group made it easier. Or
something else.

But I suspect that VSI would pay more attention to the
business impact of the move than the IP aspects.

It did not work out business wise.

The open sourcing did not stop the decline of Solaris.

After a few years Oracle (that had bought SUN) moved back
to a closed source model.

And the open source version is something that practically
nobody use and very few can even remember the name of (I will
save people the wikipedia search - it is "illumos").

Open sourcing Solaris did not solve Solaris'es
problems.

Maybe it even made them worse.

Not a good example to provide to VSI.

Arne

On 2/18/2023 5:08 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <tsrf3b$4krc$1@dont-email.me>,
> Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> What benefits do you imagine for VSI, for customers,
>> if VSI were to do what you suggest. Talking about
>> the "open source" issue.
>
> Establishment of a developer ecosystem, crowd-sourced fixes for
> bugs, security auditing,

That all sounds very nice.

But how does it work for the VMS stuff that are already
open source?

I can tell you: two handful of people are doing all the
work.

It is problematic to find people to maintain the ifdefs
and build scripts of for VMS in many open source projects.

Expecting the community to do serious work on 25 MLOC
is unrealistic.

Arne

On 2/18/2023 6:20 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> Interesting and superior technology always loses relative to
> simple economics. Linux is available gratis; VMS is not. Ergo,
> VMS cannot compete. 30 years ago, Linux was strictly worse than
> VMS in every measurable way; now the inverse is true. This is
> not an accident; economics dictate that proprietary will always
> lose going forward.

Everybody likes free.

But even though creating an additional copy of software
is free/effortless, then creating the software is not
free/effortless.

Fundamentally it cost the same to create 1 line of
open source code as 1 line of closed source code.

There are some open source projects that can make
it work. Linux is a good example of a huge success.

But there are also some that can't make it work.
My last post mentioned OpenSolaris. But products
like ElasticSearch and Akka are also switching
from open source licenses to different licensing.

Arne

On 2/18/2023 4:47 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <tsrfpl$4bfn$2@dont-email.me>,
> Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 2/18/2023 4:01 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>> In article <tsrdl6$4bfn$1@dont-email.me>,
>>> Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> But there are a few things to remember before
>> considering VSI going that path.
>>
>> 1) Redhat is doing fine delivering support service. But
>> they may have done even better if they could also have
>> charged real license fees, but they cannot because
>> they mostly did not create the products and the products
>> are typical under GPL or LGPL. VSI can and do sell
>> licenses.
>
> RedHat got started when the commercial Unix vendors, who did
> charge for software, were still in their prime. Which among
> them are still selling licenses?

Most of them are still selling. Oracle is selling Solaris.
IBM is selling AIX. HPE is selling HP-UX. HPE is not selling
Tru64.

They are definitely not selling as well as they did back then.

But that does not change that Redhat did not chose
to open source RHEL, JBoss etc. - it was already open
source and they did not have any way to close source it.

>> 2) Redhat doing fine delivering support service benefits
>> significantly from two facts:
>> - other companies and volunteers are doing the majority
>> of the maintenance work on the products they offer
>> support on
>
> What percentage of commits to the Linux git repository come
> from authors with an `@redhat.com` email address?

It varies per version.

For kernel 5.10 then Redhat did 5.7% of commits with 3.9% of the lines.

For kernel 6.0 the numbers are 5.4% and 2.7%.

I am pretty sure that Redhat in the past has been over 10%.

But whether it is 3% or 5% or 10%, then the remaining 97%/95%/90%
is definitely the majority.

> Moreoever, this sort of ecosystem doesn't exist around VMS
> right now because it simply cannot.

It cannot exist for VMS itself.

It can exist for all sorts of applications and tools.

It just don't.

>> - the products are widely used products, so even
>> relative low prices generate a lot of of revenue
>> Neither will be the case for VSI.
>
> Yes. Because insistence on an outdated licensing
> and revenue model is strangling adoption.

There is a huge server market that are very cost
sensitive (the people that prefer Ubuntu Server
or RockyLinux over RHEL).

There is also a huge market where the cost of VMS is
not a problem - there are still sold a lot
of expensive software.

VSI probably find the second market more attractive
than the first.

Arne

On 2/18/2023 6:16 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Sat, 2023-02-18 at 14:09 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> It should support AMD processors
>
> YESSSSS!
>
> By the many flavoured Ghods, that's great news!

Note that the above was something I quoted - not my text.

Arne

On 2/18/2023 6:17 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Sat, 2023-02-18 at 14:30 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> And honestly I don't see Ada make the cut.
>
> I don't think that will be an issue, as the GNU compiler suite has
> that, and once it's been ported, that will be good enough.

But will GCC be ported to VMS (again)?

The last GCC version I have seen run on VMS is 2.8.0
(on VMS Alpha).

And that is a let us call it "not latest and greatest".

:-)

Arne