Talk:OpenVMS

Documentation colors

I seem to remember that the oldest binder color, before orange, was blue. - Denimadept (talk) 13:33, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Don't know if that was the "oldest", but certainly the V3 doc set came in blue binders. V4 was orange (actually "Chinese red"). V5 was gray. Jeh (talk) 17:49, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I seem to remember pre-VMS PDP-11 documentation coming in blue binders. Guy Harris (talk) 18:14, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Source availability

The article currently describes VMS as a closed-source operating system. This seems inconstant with my experience. It might be more accurate to describe it as source-available software. The sources were readily available on microfiche, so open to inspection but not easy recompilation.

My experience was strictly based on VAX systems, but I always assumed that something similar applied to OpenVMS as well. Can anyone detail what has happened to source availability under the post-HP evolution of the software as it is being ported to x86? Burt Harris (talk) 19:44, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

The source kits are no longer available, will update the article accordingly. Vt320 (talk) 13:55, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

DEC OS Family links to a category that includes UNIX

--Reciprocist (talk) 17:42, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Maybe RSX-11 would be a more appropriate value for family? Vt320 (talk) 18:34, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

It also includes RSTS/E and DOS-11 and TSS/8 and TOPS-10 and ...; presumably the problem here's that the category is too broad, listing a bunch of OSes that don't, collectively, have anything in common other than "DEC offered them", not that it happens to include two Unixes from DEC.

And VMS 1) introduced, as far as I know, a lot of concepts and mechanisms not in RSX-11 and 2) was arguably a more significant and notable OS, so would it make sense to name the family against the earlier, smaller predecessor? Guy Harris (talk) 20:30, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Probably not. Perhaps the solution here is to not list a "Family" category at all? The history section already makes the lineage clear. Vt320 (talk) 08:52, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. (And it should probably be dropped for other DEC OSes that only have "they came from DEC" in common with other members of the family.) Guy Harris (talk) 20:56, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Done, applied the same change across all articles in the DEC OS category. Vt320 (talk) 22:29, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I could maybe see a case for a TENEX family containing TENEX and TOPS-20, but that's about it. Guy Harris (talk) 23:15, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Makes sense, done. Vt320 (talk) 09:15, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

What "VAX/VMS" means

The lede of this article needs to do a fuller job of explaining what "VAX/VMS" means, since VAX/VMS is a redirect to here. The lede explains the first meaning, which is that VAX/VMS was the official name of the operating system in the beginning. But in common practice at the time, "VAX/VMS" referred not just to the operating system, but to the computing platform that was the combination of the VAX hardware architecture and the VMS operating system. It was this combination that was very successful in the industry in the 1980s and when articles about some software say that it ran on VAX/VMS, it is this combination that they are linking to, not just the operating system. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:34, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

When OpenVMS was known as VAX/VMS, it only ran on VAX hardware. The articles you refer to could say "VAX systems running VAX/VMS" but the fact that it was a VAX system is implied from it being VAX/VMS. Perhaps the lede should make it more clear that the name change happened to indicate that the OS was no longer exclusive to the VAX? Vt320 (talk) 17:05, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

There are a few things here. First, no one would say "VAX systems running VAX/VMS"; people either said "VAX systems running VMS" or, most commonly, "VAX/VMS". To me, the lede should make clear that while VAX/VMS may have been the formal name of the OS, in common usage the phrase "VAX/VMS" often referred to the platform as a whole. Second, links to [[VAX/VMS]] should be left alone in articles rather than changed to [[OpenVMS|VAX/VMS]], per WP:NOTBROKEN. It's possible that someday someone will write an article about the combined VAX hardware/VMS operating system computing platform – akin say to the Wintel or IBM mainframe articles – and in that case, that article would be located at VAX/VMS. The former link would then point to the right thing while the latter link would not. But even if that doesn't happen, article links going through the VAX/VMS redirect causes no harm and is not something to be avoided. Third, the WP:WEIGHT of the lede and the article body is off. The lede doesn't mention that the 1980s were the period of greatest success for VAX/VMS. The History section spends 4 paragraphs on the VAX/VMS era but 16 paragraphs on various ports of VMS/OpenVMS to other architectures. The Alpha one is important but the Itanium and x86-64 ones much less so – by then DEC was gone and the popularity of VMS/OpenVMS was in steep decline. If I didn't know better – and many readers won't – this article would give me the wrong impression about what parts of VMS/OpenVMS history are important and which parts aren't. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

After reviewing guidelines on redirects, the changes made to some articles were made based on a misunderstanding on where redirects should be used. I'll go and revert them where appropriate.

I agree that the history is a bit lopsided section is lopsided. The current format where it groups by platform port makes it difficult to add relevant context in. This is something I may work on in future. Vt320 (talk) 19:50, 8 November 2021 (UTC

Thanks for doing the reversions. As for the weighting, I've looked at the sources for the history sections about the Itanium port and the x86-64 port, and those sources are substandard. Most of the Itanium sources are to DEC/HP publications or DEC/HP user groups, neither of which is the kind of strong third-party sourcing one looks for. And just about all of the x64-86 sources are to VSI, the outfit doing the port, and are thus are kind of self-promotional and supply no indication of importance. I think you would be justified in greatly reducing these sections. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:19, 9 November 2021 (UTC)