Re: SGI files for chapter 11

In article <UOfpUzD8BMs5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
nothome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Malcolm Dunnett) writes:
In article <1147108136.879764.277650@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Andrew" <andrew_harrison@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Sun/IBM/The tooth Fairy are not going to buy OpenVMS and port it to
anything.

HP are highly unlikely to port it to x86.


How do you know that?

Well, people have been screaming for it for sometime now (not sure when
Dave started his call for it, but he can chime in here if he wants) and
for an equally long period of time the VMS engineers that hang out here
have been telling us there are no plans to do so. Sounds "highly unlikely"
to me.


Presumably they still believe (rightly or wrongly) that IA64 is
a better choice, but one has to believe that with each port to a different
processor the subsequent port becomes easier.

One is free to believe that, but I am not sure it makes it true. Any
of the VMS engineers want to answer that one?


If there are sufficient customers who let HP know that VMS is the
only reason they are HP customers and if IA64 proves to not be viable
then porting VMS to x86 would be a good business decision.

Say what? Marketing the hell out of VMS would be "a good business decision".
Do you see it happening? Sometimes ego is more important than stockholders
investments. Admitting that backing Itanium was a mistake would be a big
hit in some people's egos. (Who was the exec at Bendix who said he would
bankrupt the company before he would let anyone take it over?)

I have every
confidence the good folks in VMS engineering would have no great
difficulty doing this port if asked.

While I have no doubt that the VMS engineers are a rather remarkable
collection of Computer Scientists, I would not go so far as to say
they "would have no great difficulty" doing the port. For a long
time people ran around saying VMS would not run on x86. If that was
true, not enough has changed to actually make a port easy.

bill

--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
.

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