Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!bzs From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: AT&T Joining OSF Message-ID: <24360@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: 10 Aug 88 14:10:29 GMT References: <10474@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <5960008@hpcupt1.HP.COM> <5796@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <377@ksr.UUCP> Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci. Lines: 47 In-reply-to: richt@breakpoint.ksr.com's message of 29 Jul 88 13:20:42 GMT >Rubbish. First of all, it's "VMS", not "MVS". And, DEC ships sources in >micro-fiche format *free* with every major release, and machine-readable >source is available for those who want to pay for it. Which, is >a whole lot more open than Sun, for example. > > - Rich Rubbish indeed. Read the section on VMS sources in the Digital Desk Reference Guide (published by DEC, several 3 inch binders describing all products.) First, you are basically correct about the fiche, I'm talking about machine readable sources. There is no guarantee that the sources provided will compile and certainly no guarantee that, if they compile, will compile into anything corresponding to a DEC release version of VMS. The price includes no language compiler sources. They are separate and similarly priced items (so you get this list of $45K items.) The sources do not include DECNET sources, they are not available at any price as far as I could tell, this seemed to be confirmed by my queries to DEC. Although this seems less important these days at the time I last seriously looked into it VMS sources required about 500MB of disk and a kernel rebuild reportedly took a standalone 780 overnight. Again, this is probably no big deal anymore but as someone who did UNIX kernel and utility remakes on a whim on a time-shared machine hearing that I would probably have to dedicate a few hundred thousand in equipment to do any realistic work dampened my enthusiasm. Basically, my point is, that DEC never intended there to be source sites for VMS and they were very rare. Last time I tried to find any I found a handful, two or three in the United States. Their intentions were successful for various reasons. Needless to say this is not the case with Unix although specific vendors of course can vary those policies. As a matter of fact, last I checked DEC was quite reasonable about the sources to Ultrix, so it's not a corporate flame here, just that VMS was never designed to make sources available to customers, Unix was. -Barry Shein