Re: The possibility of vms opening up?

geletine wrote:
Dave Froble wrote:
When VMS was initially produced, the prime reason was to sell VAX
computers. At that time the only reason computer companies produced
software was to sell hardware.


Microsoft continue to make an ever increasing bloated Os in order for
hardware vendors to make money ,

Now that's just horseshit! Microsoft could give a damn about the HW vendors, and has been smart enough not to compete with them. Microsoft keeps adding features hoping to sell a new version of the OS every couple of years. To do so, they must provide reasons to upgrade, thus the features/bloat.

of course there are open sourse
alternatives that run on older computers, apart from games and the ever
increasing multimedia market for faster computers. So the issue still
continues.

Today is a bit different, with the hardware in many cases being a
commodity. A particular OS is not required in order to use commodity
hardware because there is a variety available to do that job.

It all depends on what market your selling to, certain products work on
certain Os.
In the work enviroment for instance, the os with the best value in
support and that users know would mostly likely be chosen. Open source
software and os support is on the ever increase.

Look, no matter what anyone wants to promote, Microsoft Office rules the office automation market. Heck, even as the US Justice Department was suing Microsoft for being a monopoly, the US Government was specifying MS Office as the 'official' tools for office automation. Figure that one.

On a scale of 1 - 100, guess the market penetration of Microsoft Office, and guess the market penetration of any or all other products. My guess is it's in the 90s for MS Office, and in single digits for all else.

VMS exists today to provide some unique capabilities. Possibly not as
unique as some believe, but still it has it's values. As a product, VMS
(should) produce profits for HP.

Hp surely can profit from support and selling more hardware and giving
away vms.

Well, most commercial VMS sites won't go without support. The support is an ongoing money maker, vs a one-time amount for selling an OS license. I'd agree that support is where the money is.

In the past, systems came with a 3-year warranty, which included basic support. If the money wasn't made with the OS license cost, it wouldn't be made at all.

I'd think that support should be the prime target, but, for those who won't purchase support, why should HP give away free something which costs them money?

Keep in mind that VMS has always been a high margin product, and that doesn't bother those who need it. Doesn't bother them at all.

1) Why should HP give up such profits? Because you'd like them to?

if this was just for me, this would be a dead forum a long time ago,
Maybe I have not said enough, but profit can be made in support, or
customised applications or patches to suit the client. Novell work to
this goal by selling a corporate version with all the source, and a
free version for anybody with all source. The two versions cater to a
different markets.

But profits are being made in support. At least until HP completely guts the support organization. With the exception of IBM, I'm guessing nothing out there comes close to what VMS produces in support revenue. I really don't know, just guessing.

2) As pointed out many times, the source listings are available. You
want them for free? Fine, I'd like my next Cadillac to also be free.
Actually, I'd like everything to be free.

source listings is not code source, if cars could be copied as simply
and cheaply as setting up storage space and bandwidth, which is already
part of the buisness and then freely available to the world to not just
take but to improve upon, without actually paying a wage then hell take
a car for all your friends and family.

That's part of the problem. Because software is not seen as a tangible property by many, they don't assign it any value.

I am not sure if you are aware
that Sun's latest OpenSPARC T1 is open source, yes thats not a lie, the
schematics are truelly availabe to anybody for zero payment.

But, is anyone free to produce product and sell it without Sun getting some type of cut? It's most CPU designers dream to get multiple producers of their product.

Lets not forget most of solaris is open source, are Sun closing their
buisness?

That's an experiment they were forced into, and how well it will work out is not yet known.

why not vms open at least some of the Os?

Cheap or free sources, yeah I'll go along with that. Usage of the OS however, I'd tend to stick with some type of license fee. You don't see Microsoft giving away free usage of windows, do you? I would like to see more competition in price at the low end. However, the license fees on itanic based systems are getting pretty good. The system prices are another matter.

Ok Sun have not yet opened
java, having said that there is a very good free version thats not
complete but progress is fast. And Sun have not complaind about it.
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/



What you haven't done is define what you mean by 'open', which means
entirely different things to different people, and you haven't made a
business case for HP to make an effort to do something that you want.


I mean open source , the source code being available, See above for the
buisness point of view.

The source code is available now. There are no/few secrets. It may have a cost associated with it, but it IS AVAILABLE! Usage of the OS is another matter. See above about Microsoft.

I believe there will be a time in the future where not being open
source will kill a buisness, apart from a select few.

Believe what you will.

It's not the cost that's hurting VMS the most. It's visibility.

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

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