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

[Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>]

On 2016-08-28, Bob Broderbund <bbroderbund@broderbund.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

Oh, I see what you mean now and agree with you about IA64.

However, given the general move to a core set of standard architectures
in today's world, the reality is that VMS needs to run on a mainstream
server architecture (which IA64 never was) in order to remain a possible
option to be considered.

>> 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.
>

I misunderstood what you were getting at. Yes, in that light, VSI are
indeed trying to do the job that HP _should_ have been doing but whose
board were instead more interested in next quarter's figures only. :-(

>
> 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.
>

I didn't know any of that. Thanks.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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