OpenVMS v9.2 for x86 is Available | Hacker News Reader

OpenVMS v9.2 for x86 is Available

vmssoftware.com

Hobbyist license in the future when more compilers are available. Why in the world are they waiting to provide it? A symbol of a clueless corporate leadership.

The compilers aren’t done yet. They’re using cross compilers running on Itanium.

This, in turn, is because they are converting the compilers from a proprietary code generator to LLVM.

Huh ? OpenVMS does not have a native compiler ?

It does, on Itanium, Alpha, and VAX. My understanding from looking at VMS Software's web site is that the native compilers for x86-64, for more well known languages like C++, are still in testing: https://vmssoftware.com/about/news/2022-07-08-state-of-the-9...

My point is that why are they delaying a hobbyist license, just because the compilers aren't ready. It doesn't make sense.

Previous hobbyist distributions (for Alpha and VAX, at least, not sure about Itanium) included compilers. Certainly, it will be much more useful to hobbyists if compilers are available.

Compilers can be installed as software packages, these can be downloaded after the base install is completed. Or maybe VMS does not have s concept of installing software packages at all. What do I know. Their decision to delay still doesn't make sense.

Of course, it has packages. Personally, I think an OS without compilers is less than useful for hobbyists. I mean, what are you going to run on it? It's a new architecture so there aren't many existing programs.

I'd prefer they wait and provide a more complete distribution.

In the meantime, we are all free to install older versions on Alpha or VAX emulators.

You are complaining they don’t release a half baked product for free. And if they did other people would be complaining it’s half baked and doesn’t work with a free compiler.

They are free to release nothing at all for free, be grateful for what you get.

Yes I am complaining. Who are we? Who are hobbyists any way? We are the ones who do R&D for free, who deliver software testing for free, who take our skills into the workforce and recommend technologies as solutions. We should be treated as first class citizens. And yes _of course_ operating systems should be free to hackers and hobbyists, for the reasons outlined above.

Other than Ikea, why would a company run this as opposed to Linux or whatever? I understand clustering is cool, feels like a mainframe of sorts, I can probably come close to that with kubernetes. What are the other compelling arguments, there is no software for this platform that isn't readily available for Linux. ELI5 me.

Why not make it available to hobbyists so that hobbyists can shove all the compilers into it.

This isn't a chicken-or-egg dilemma there.

Maybe they figure supplying their own (commercial) compilers to hobby users, will discourage the growth of, say, a GCC ecosystem that will be much harder to sell to big commercial clients.

Kinda looking like that there.

The compilers for VMS have to deal with a bunch of platform idiosyncrasies, such as the ability to have a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit pointers in the one program.

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