Re: Writing a VMS clone...?

In article <ei5r05$str$1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mikko Putkonen
<miputkon@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Forgive me if I'm beating a dead horse with this...

Yes.

I wonder whether starting yet another project to produce a VMS clone,
or at least a system heavily inspired by VMS, would make any sense.

No. If it is not successful, it is a waste of time. If it is
successful, it kills the original VMS.

I
mean, a clean project pretty much from scratch or perhaps based on some
of the newer microkernels that are out there, or something. Preferably
free software/open source, perhaps licensed BSD style. Would any of
the greybeards of c.o.v be interested in working on such a project,
assuming you had the free time for that? (I personally don't have the
experience needed, so I'm basically just curious.)

Well, my beard is turning grey now, but no, I have better things to do
with my time (including participating in c.o.v).

I think an open-sourced VMS-like system would be an interesting
and beneficial thing. It would provide an alternative to the Unix
philosophy that's obviously rather prevalent in the free soft./open-
source world these days, mainly thanks to BSD, GNU, and Linux. I have
no problem with Unix (currently running Debian on my home comp.), but
I think it would be great to be able to look at the other sides of
things as well. It's somewhat scary how the computing world, once
obviously rather diverse, has now become so homogenic; many of the
kids today basically only know about Linux and Windows... ok, and Mac.

Sic transit gloria mundi. However, to the typical unix geek, not to
mention OS-fascists like RMS, an open-source VMS would make as little
sense as an open-source Windows.

Of course, writing a complete OS from scratch is a helluva lot of
work; even I understand that. But would writing something a bit more
light-weight at first be so unrealistic after all...?

What's the point? For people who know VMS, it would never be enough.
For people who don't, it would give a wrong impression.

The current FreeVMS project is proceeding very slowly, due to the lack
of developers.

Yes, but in turn this is probably due to the fact that most people don't
think it worthwhile.

I sometimes take a look at the code and other material,
and it seems a bit messy to me, with all the various stuff from the
earlier freevms project(s) and from the other sources. I wonder if the
project would be more popular had they chosen a different approach in the
beginning.

Anyone who has any realistic idea of the amount of work involved in VMS
must come to the conclusion that the only way to replicate it would be
with the resources like DEC had in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

Linux might tempt some people, but let's face it, the fact that a
student could throw together something comparable to a commercial unix
implementation in his spare time probably tells us more about the
simplicity of commercial unix implementations than about the (actually
quite good) programming skills of this guy. "Hey boss, tonight I'll
replace some executables in SYS$SYSTEM with some of the latest
open-source group-effort stuff I got from the net" just doesn't cut the
mustard in many serious shops. :-|

.

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