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How Big Is VMS?

(vmssoftware.com)
77 points rbanffy | 1 comments | 03 Apr 25 18:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.222s | source
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jamesy0ung ◴[03 Apr 25 21:08 UTC] No.43575439[source]▶
Is there any reason to use VMS today other than for existing applications that cannot be migrated? I've heard its reliability is legendary, but I've never tried it myself. The 1 year licensed VM seems excessively annoying. Is it just old and esoteric, or does it still have practical use? At least with Linux, multiple vendors release and support distros and it is mainstream, whereas with VMS, you'd be stuck with VSI.
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mixmastamyk ◴[04 Apr 25 01:05 UTC] No.43577299[source]▶
No. Most of the good stuff was lifted into Windows NT decades ago. The rest has been far surpassed over the same time period by Linux and others. A few cool things probably fell into the cracks, but that's common in the industry.

It's interesting in a "what if/parallel universe" kind of way, but I certainly wouldn't touch it for anything new with that licensing.

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1. rbanffy ◴[07 Apr 25 14:09 UTC] No.43611724[source]▶
Licensing cost is, indeed, a major deterrent for any green field project planning to run VMS. The same applies to any proprietary operating system, however, be it AIX, IBMi, z/OS, MCP, HP-UX, or Windows. I don't think there are many new work going on any of these platforms.