VMS, etc. (was Proprietary Systems... from midrange-l)

[Jim Damato <jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This topic was just screaming to be moved off the Midrange technical list.

>  Brad Jensen:
>I don't know if VMS is dead, I think its about gone isn't it?

>  jt:
>Is that Vax...?  If so, IIRC, that was the Compaq offering, mentioned in
the
>article (Compaq, who bought DEC, apparently is/has? let Vax die a slow
death
>due to malnutrition of development resources.)

VMS is still kicking.  The VAX was on it's way out before Compaq bought DEC
-- New releases of Open VMS are still being announced for the Alpha
platform.  Open VMS seems to have some continuing life on the Alpha, even on
Itanium chip sets with Compaq's announcements concerning the Alpha chip.
It's my feeling that VMS functionality and the Alpha chip are bound legacies
of DEC's engineering.  Who knows how long VMS (and the Alpha platform
itself) will last in an Intel world.

I've always enjoyed the differences between operating systems.  I don't
understand this current mentality of "In the end there can be only one".  I
don't know whether it came from the open compatibility requirements of the
Internet, or desktop computing, or something else.

To me, VMS represents what Unix could have grown into if Unix were developed
as a proprietary OS.  From the perspective of a System 38 - AS/400 person
thrust into the Unix world I've always felt that the standards binding Unix
stunted its growth.  Features that were brought into the 38 and 400
environment over time will always be layered products in Unix, for better or
worse.  VMS has roots in Unix, but with enhancement and growth --
particularly in areas such as system management and batch processing or work
management.

Also, is there an operating environment out there even now that matches the
clustering capabilities that VMS has had for years?

It could just be my AS/400 bias, but I don't have confidence in a host of
third-party layered products providing environment functionality.  To me,
the death of proprietary systems is the death of stability in computing.

-Jim

James P. Damato
Manager - Technical Administration
Dollar General Corporation
<mailto:jdamato@dollargeneral.com>