RE: Story Time
- From: "Main, Kerry" <Kerry.Main@xxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 11:39:37 -0400
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
Sent: June 5, 2007 10:12 AM
To: Info-VAX@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Story Time
In article
<FA60F2C4B72A584DBFC6091F6A2B86840242DA22@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
t>,
"Main, Kerry" <Kerry.Main@xxxxxx> writes:
On-----Original Message-----
From: bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
nextBehalf Of Bill Gunshannon
Sent: June 5, 2007 8:50 AM
To: Info-VAX@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Story Time
=20
In article <1181020029.542678.272580@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
davidc@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
On Jun 4, 5:13 pm, Sue <susan_skonet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:(and
Dear Newsgroup,
So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
everyday saying the same thing.
True. I get tired of reading posts by the same folks telling me
others that stumble into this group) how OpenVMS is dying, what
yadafaux pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS,
back-yada yada. No good deed seems to go unpunished, every win is
nospinned into a loss.
By these standards, Linux should not exist, there was no money,
statedsupport, no marketshare. Worse than what OpenVMS has. But itexists.
=20
But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you
denigrate
have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have
contribute.numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of
crap
like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
=20
Because for the most part, people don't complain, they
something.There's fewer applications available you say? Then port
beThere are tons of quality applications that are GPL'd than would
Aftergreat to port to OpenVMS. Not anything useful? I call BS.
fork()all, what exactly do you think make a Linux distribution today,=20
anyway.
Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require
whichand the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of
way ofVMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
=20
Please, lets forget the hype here ok?
Are you saying that because OpenVMS does not support fork (a UNIX
doing IO), that its future is doomed?
That's not what I said at all. Someone else hinted that porting
Unix/Linux Open Source Software was somehow trivial and could be
done by the people here in their spare time. I merely pointed out
that porting from Unix/Linux to VMS is anything but trivial unless
the program itself is trivial (and therefore of little if any value.)
There are major UNIX applications that have been ported to OpenVMS and
other platforms for that matter and while there are always some OS
specific things that might need to be done another way, it certainly is
not something that is a showstopper.
Hey, what do you think Oracle does for OpenVMS? For Windows?
Oh, and fork() is not "a UNIX way of doing IO".
is
Geez, I guess Microsoft will be heart broken to hear their platform
doomed because it does not support fork either.
Microsoft's OSes already support all the useful applications they
need.
They are not in need of someone porting OSS in their spare time. And,
Funny, I have fork() on the XP box on my desk (at least under Cygwin,
I haven't done any native Windows development in a long time so I
can't
say if they have it now, too.)
are
There are many ways to accomplish a given task. In some cases, there
better ways of doing the same thing.
OK, so how would you accomplish the equivalent of fork() in all this
OSS people think we should be porting to VMS? If you know a "better
way" stop keeping it under your hat.
Simple - you start with research 101 and enter "fork OpenVMS" into
google or you read the VMS FAQ's.
As examples:
http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2002-March/001754.html
pressure
As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge
to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within theit is
University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because
technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least whenyou
look at the initial cost only).=20
Nice excuse, but I just told you they have a VMS machine here for
academic
use. It is running all the time. No one uses it. Now, why would
that be?
Probably because they do not even know it is there or what ever IT
service is offered on the OpenVMS system is not of interest to them.
on
However, like the old saying goes, "the grass is not always greener
the other side" and these same Universities are now struggling withchange
monthly security patching, version control, license monitoring,
management and yet still keep in line with regulatory requirementslike
FERPA, SOX, HIPPA etc.=20
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. They are "struggling" so hard I'll
bet you get a thousand calls a day asking for you to deliver new
Itanium
VMS systems to Universities all over the world. :-)
They are struggling big time "no staff, to many patches, to many
regulatory concerns, to many things to do etc etc .." were common
complaints from the IT survey we did (and this environment was all
Windows and Solaris.
Their big mandate was to migrate from Solaris to Linux - ASAP was the
speed I was told. Which was technically better made no difference as up
front costs were all they were worried about. Unfortunately, when I
pointed out all of the monthly security patches for Linux, they were
amazed (shocked?) because they were not aware that there are so many
released every month.
I suspect the same story is true of many sites (OpenVMS, Solaris, AIX,
HP-UX) that are migrating to Linux i.e. similar to Windows sites a few
years ago, they are only looking at short term savings and how to deal
with all of the monthly Linux security patches will somehow work itself
out.
And lets not kid ourselves - the University environment is rife with
what some might call "internal hackers".
Not sure what that's supposed to mean. The days of the student hacker
are long gone. Most of these kids would much rather spend an evening
in the local bar than in a computer lab today. As for "internal" vs.
"external", read any security trade rag. The majority of threats are
from inside, University or business. That's just the way it is today.
That's not what the IT folks at the University I was at stated.
what
What is happening with OpenVMS at Universities is no different than
is also happening to Solaris and AIX at Universities ..
Really?? We have a course here that runs every Spring that still
has the students installing, configuring, administering and developing
software on Solaris. We still have a Sparc system in the lab. This
course does not now and never has included any, even casual, mention
or exposure to VMS, even whe we were still running it here in the
department. Read my lips, there is academic use of BSDUnix, Linux,
Solaris, Windows, QNX, BrickOS, etc. etc. There is no academic use
of VMS.
Mmmm, so you have a UNIX based software development course environment.
Fine.
I would suggest to you that your University is likely looking at moving
your Solaris environment to Linux as well.
same thing
happening to them as well. I know as I just recently completed a
multi-platform consolidation engagement at a large US University.
Oh, you are talking about administrative use. Well, that's is
different.
We still use VMS administratively. But the University is tied to
Banner
and Oracle, not the OS. If Banner moved to Windows Server 2005
tomorrow,
so would the University. It's just what people have been saying for
ages here. It's the applications, not the OS. As more and more
people
(like CDC) begin to see VSM as not in their future the applications
will
move off of VMS and we all know what the current users of those
application
will do.
It really is time to read the handwriting on the wall. If the people
inside of HP can't convince them to start pushing VMS in order to
strengthen it's position in the industry, what chance do outsiders
have? While I am in the market for a new position and would love to
work on VMS, I am not likely to bet my future on it.
You have to go where your strengths are. Based on your postings, I would
say your future lies in UNIX administration - not OpenVMS
administration.
Nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do.
However, if I were an IT Exec looking to hire SysAdmins these days, I
would be looking for people who can manage multiple OS platforms.
Same thing goes for DBA's. I would rather have someone comfortable with
both Oracle and SQL Server with no religious preferences than just one
or the other.
Simply adds much more value to the company.
Regards
Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
HP Services Canada
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax: 613-591-4477
kerryDOTmainAThpDOTcom
(remove the DOT's and AT)
OpenVMS - the secure, multi-site OS that just works.
.
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