FreeVMS

From: roart_at_nvg.ntnu.no <(roart_at_nvg.ntnu.no)>
Date: Thu Jan 10 10:01:01 2002

On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 08:14:25PM +0100, Hans H?bner wrote:
> I'm not convinced that it makes sense to keep the FreeVMS idea up. It just
> does not make sense:
>
> - OpenVMS is a mature environment. Maturity and obsolescense are tightly
> coupled, but one thing is sure right now: VMS is 24 years old, many of the

Unix is older: 33 years.

> ideas which influenced its design where intimately coupled to the computing
> style of the late 1970ies (Minicomputers, CISC, large systems etc.)

They may say minis and mainframes are dead, but it is still mainly words...
A lot of machines with Windows/PC (even Linux/PC) may still not be up to the task...

Supercomputing centres may use a lot of smaller machines instead of Crays,
though, but that is a bit different computing model.

> - OpenVMS is complete. Reimplementing even only a limited subset of VMS would
> be a real ambitious effort. Reimplementing it in a portable way would be even
> harder, as the operating system is tightly coupled to the design of the DEC
> CPUs.

It will be 5.x-ish, because that's the newest complete Internals books.

> If what you want is use the coolest operating system of the world, get a VAX
> or an Alpha and run OpenVMS. It's ready to use, it is complete and it is
> pretty cool.

Will be using that, too.

-Roar Thron?s
Received on Thu Jan 10 2002 - 10:01:01 GMT