> Steven, have you looked at the HP Open
> Source porting systems which are now
> available?
Other than looking at that openvms.org story,
no.
> If you have and they do not meet your
> requirements then perhaps something could
> be done about that.
I have not formally determined my
requirements. Until the withdrawal of patch
access, my requirements were being met by my
own systems, so there was no need to assemble
such a list. From my memory of using the
TestDrive systems, the typical shortcomings
included:
Missing freeware (MMK, Zip+UnZip, gzip,
bzip2, cURL, m[un]pack, VMSTAR, wget, GNU bc,
diff, patch, ... ). Typically, multiple
versions of those. Setting this all up on
some remote system would be a big job. (A
whole lot of work, just to get back to what I
already have where I am.)
Missing privileges.
Missing e-mail access.
Limited network access.
Missing peripheral hardware. It's hard to do
any testing of a program like cdrecord on a
remote system which lacks a CD/DVD-writing
drive (and a helpful operator with a ready
supply of discs).
Missing multiple OS and compiler versions.
No VAX hardware.
Perhaps I have an inflated sense of
self-importance, but I'd've figured that my
contributions to the VMS ecosystem were worth
enough to justify my continued access to OS
updates and patches for the systems where
I've been doing the work. It's not entirely
clear to me why I would want to bother
jumping through a variety of hoops -- new
hoops -- to continue to do what I have been
doing. I don't deny getting some benefit
from the Hobbyist license program, but,
really, who's doing whom a favor here?
