James Taylor wrote:
 
> Why are Miami's DEC Alphas running OpenVMS instead of UNIX?
 
You know, after Kent shared the news with me that there is actually a
group working on writing a free VMS, I had one question for him:
 
Why?
 
I don't know if the crowd we were in took it the right way -- I wasn't
trying to depreciate his livelihood, as I am sure you would not do
yourself, although some people might construe it that way.  Rather, I was
actually interested in the answer -- why the heck is VMS around in the
first place?
 
I am pretty familiar with UNIX (and will stand beside find, grep, the
pipe, and all the other how-could-you-live-without-them essentials of
UNIX until the bitter end, may it never come), but aside from /PAGE,
/ALL, and my LOGIN.COM, I know very little about the workings of VMS.
Yes, on my VMS account, I have ls, rm, and cp aliased to DIR, DEL, and
COPY.
 
I've heard that VMS has a number of strong points where UNIX is lacking
-- VMS has multiple levels of security, where UNIX has only root and
peons, is the one I've heard most often -- but I, like yourself, am
anxious to hear a real defense of its cryptic directory syntax (now do I
use square braces here, or a colon?), its confusing file names (well I
didn't need the explicit version number to CREATE the $&*# file!), and
its tiny user base (where's comp.os.vms.* ?).
 
Kent, our problem is not the vast superiority of UNIX over VMS, nor is it
even our distaste at VMS's callous disregard for case, for how could we
know that we are justified in our opinions?  No, our problem is that we
are ignorant.
 
Can you remove the polarized lenses of UNIX before us, and let the light
of truth fall on our eyes?
 
Clayton L. Hines
 
UNIX Software Specialist                        email  [log in to unmask]
Miami University                                voice        513.529.7600
Oxford, Ohio, USA                                 fax        513.529.1496