Re: [OT] VMS, was: Re: Could you write a BSD like os in ADA?

[Bob Broderbund <bbroderbund@broderbund.com>]

On 2016-08-28, Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
> On 2016-08-23, Bob Broderbund <bbroderbund@broderbund.com> wrote:
>>
>> VMS is a good OS but it's far behind MVS and seems to be suffering from a
>> loss of (management) direction and not enough cash.
>
> That latter bit is putting it mildly. :-(
>
>> It probably started
>> going downhill when it moved from being owned and managed end-to-end by one
>> company to today where it is spread across two companies for software and
>> another one or two for hardware.
>>
>
> HP still supply hardware and software support for VMS running on HP
> supported hardware. 

That's not really what I meant. What I meant was I think VMS's best days
were when it was totally controlled by one company _and_ had bespoke
hardware to run on. True, HP does own the kit and kaboodle but Itanic wasn't
designed to run VMS. It's just another monstrosity that VMS happened to be
ported to. There is a big difference.

> The VSI effort is a recent effort (relatively speaking) and is targeted to
> completely new platforms for VMS; it has absolutely nothing to do with the
> decline of VMS within HP.

Is that true? If HP wasn't letting VMS die a slow death then where's the
business case for VSI? I would argue it is exactly the decline of VMS within
HP that made VSI possible and necessary.

> The lack of investment in VMS within HP has been going on for at least
> a decade and the impression I have as a former HP VMS customer is that
> HP were doing the minimum needed in terms of investment to keep VMS
> somewhat alive (for various values of somewhat).

See above!

>> IBM is still throwing a lot of money into z/OS and the hardware and it is
>> still a multibillion dollar ecosystem. I don't know what the safety critical
>> people use for hardware but if you have the money there isn't anything
>> better for safety critical than an OS that stays up 5 nines without the need
>> for clustering or much of anything at all on the administration side.
>>
>
> It would be nice if you could run z/OS on Hercules under a VMS style
> hobbyist program. Might be an interesting OS to play with.

That's a very sore spot indeed. But z/OS is not practical for a desktop user
like VMS could be. But it is a wonderful OS. A hobbyist program would be
good for enabling small developers to be able to write products for
z/OS. I'm not sure anybody else would have much use for it. I'm really not
sure why IBM won't allow it or support it aggressively. It ought to be good
for everybody. But this is an old problem and IBM is not changing their
position. They don't go after little guys who happen to have a copy of z/OS
but if somebody makes themselves annoying IBM will buy them out or sue them
out of existence. They even did it to one of their own business partners!
Anybody remember Flex systems or whatever it was called? Now they have rd/Z
and that is the "official" way to do this. I don't think it's hugely
expensive but I don't remember if it allows you to do all you can with
Hercules.

There is another problem though. Hercules has been plagued by internal
strife and development has forked a few times and nobody is talking to
anybody else. IBM has been putting out new hardware faster than Hercules can
keep up with and they're also encrypting some of the system images. I
suspect in a short time Hercules will no longer be able to run z/OS at all.

Bob