Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!m2c!ulowell!ross
From: ross@swan.ulowell.edu (Ross Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS!
Message-ID: <5214@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 3 Mar 88 02:34:19 GMT
References: <2235@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: ross@swan.ulowell.edu (Ross Miller)
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 259

In article <2235@bsu-cs.UUCP} bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
}The basic problem with VMS is that it locks you into a single hardware
}architecture and vendor. In this day and age that severely limits what
}you can purchase in computing power. Vaxes vary widely in price but
}not much in processing power. For example, a small uVax-II sells for
}around $30K and offers a little less than 1 MIP. An 8750 sells for
}perhaps $500K and offers a few MIPs. In the near future this range
}closes even further, the uVax-3 being around 1/2 the processing power
}of the top end with a price range of ten-fold. It's hard to buy worse
}price-performance.
Agreed that VMS locks you into a single hardware vendor.  But the MIPS
argument doesn't hold up.  MIP =} Mythical instructions per second.
IO throughput is not being recognized in this argument.  An 8650 here
easily handles 70 people in compile edit link mode with an HSC70 on it.
It is rated at 6Mips or so.  Try putting 70 people on 6 MicroVax IIs.
Price performance on unix machines is generally better, but the
DEC hardware and VMS software is real reliable.  HSC's make things
move right along also.  People seem to think of a Vax and they think
of a wimpy little 780.  The high end 8000 series processors are
great for academic applications be they running VMS or Ultrix.  Let's
not forget that DEC does sell a Unix product.  Let's not forget that
Unix started out specifically on DEC products and does tend to run
very well on DEC machines because of this.  

... stuff deleted to save space ...

}Unix systems are relatively bundled, beyond mere hardware
}considerations most Unix systems right out of the box are completely
}useable. 
I agree.
}It can be supplemented in many significant ways with free or
}nearly free (eg.  ~$100 for an entire campus) software. VMS is heavily
}unbundled, from day one if you want so much as a compiler you begin
}layering heavy costs. 
Yes, but DECUS certainly does have a great deal of stuff available.
I still haven't gotten through all my tapes.  
}And you'll pay a separate price for acquiring
}and maintaining software on every CPU running VMS on campus. This will
}quickly lock you out of the workstation market, having to add $100K in
}basic software costs to 40 VMS workstations can put a real damper on a
}typical University's plans, no matter how good the intentions.
Yup, I agree DEC has to fix this soon or they will lose.  Again though
you can run Ultrix on a DEC machine and this does alleviate many
of these problems.  But LAVC is nice.

}Unix is the premiere system for compute intensive areas, such as the
}sciences using Fortran. 
Huh, unix fortran is known to rot.  Proprietary fortrans that may
happen to run on a unix box are good, but milage will vary greatly.
}The reason is the vast range of power a
}program written to run under Unix presents. As I said, a program
}developed on a small, affordable PC or workstation can be copied and
}re-run on huge compute engines. Although a lot of the sciences in the
}past used VMS they now generally realize that this was an error and
}the communities are rapidly switching to Unix, any argument that
}science is done on VMS is a false argument of the past.
Science is done???  A scientist would explore all systems to look
at the usefulness of each, otherwise the scientist is a close minded
person and by definition not a scientist.
} You should
}poll major science depts and research labs. If nothing else, the fact
}that the Cray and other super-computers run Unix has pushed the
}equation in this favor, a person using VMS is essentially locked out
}of the entire NSF super-computer initiative. 
Woha there, crays also run in Vax Clusters running VMS.  Just think
real IO speeds of 80Mbits per second achievable, instead of the 2 or
3 Mbits per second of an ethernet controller.
}Decnet would tend to
}reaffirm this retardation (TCP can be had on VMS but it's sort of like
}teaching a pig to dance, speak to VMS sites and they'll tell you what
}a general pain in the ass it is to deal with third party vendors,
}network software breaking on each O/S release etc etc.)
Most companies if kicked long and hard enough will try to resolve a
problem like this.  I think that in the in DEC will be forced to also.

}These admins will sneer at things like X-windows, lisp
}(which doesn't cost $10K/node), AI systems etc in preference to their
}big-name commercial databases and spread-sheets as if what students
}and professors do is not to be taken seriously, then why are they on a
}campus? 
Ah, but remember that the purpose of a campus is to teach.  To teach
these big name data bases is useful since they are the most powerful
and the most used when the student will go out into industry.
But, on the other hand Ingres, one of the biggest and most powerful, 
has its roots in unix.  Let's not forget that DEC did make Ada available
at 1k per node, versus at the time all the 20k compilers.  This was
for academic institutions only I belive.  So the horse is not black
or white, it is grey.
}It's no accident that both Athena and Andrew have chosen Unix
}for their massive campus computing projects.
Oh, Athena great sucker upper of money, that Athena.  I am less than
impressed with a 30Million dollar window package.
}Unix makes available the forefront of hardware technology, parallel
}processing from companies like Encore, Sequent, BBN (Butterfly), RISC
}and the so-called "super-workstations" like Sun/4, MIPS, HP etc. which
}can deliver nearly 1MIP/$1K of price. 
Unix was easy to port.  Yea unix.
}The parallel processor provide
}time-sharing systems extending into the hundreds of MIPs, again for
}about $1K/MIP. Anything new and innovative runs Unix, not VMS, it
}would be foolish to lock an entire academic community out of all this.
}I can understand why a bank is not particularly concerned, but why a
}(supposedly) active research community? Why lock yourself out of all
}this. The VMS salesthings will claim that they're going to do all this
}*in the future*, they've been saying that for years and years, and
}when they do come out with something it tends to be too little too
}late, in name only, like a dual processor 8800 which barely exploits
}what tiny parallelism it has.
Yea, but unless you've been on Mars you know that VMS 5.0 will take 
advantage of the multiprocessor machines.  Also the busses in question
can support more than two cpus.  A parallel machine with IO throughput?

... points raised about VMS not being modern, I sorta agree ...

}The claim that Unix is somehow less secure than VMS is a red herring.
}Unix offers sufficient security for campus systems, you're not the NSA
}(again the tactic of arguing that VMS is better for things you don't
}need.) 
Unix is easy to crack.  I have never seen a gugu for VMS.  I have seen
people break into machines to shut them down because a known power
outage was coming and the person with the root password was not around.
Also unix varies greatly in integrity from machine to machine.
}More importantly, many Unix systems are available with full
}sources for a modest price, typically $1000/campus (it's simply a
}matter of your vendor choices, more than you can say for VMS where
}there is no choice.) Without the sources you are, at best, at the
}mercy of the vendor for security. A huge security hole which is
}bringing you to your knees (which happens regularly on VMS, and the
}news travels the networks like wildfire) leaves you helpless and at
}the vendor's whims as to whether or not they feel like closing the
}hole this week, or next month, or put it off for next release.
In all fairness you can get the sources via microfiche.  When DEC does
learn of a problem it seems that they do ship out the update within
a month or two.  It is a problem not having sources, at a reasonable
price though.
}In fact their concern with only commercial DP makes them *less*
}interested in your security problems. Banks don't have malicious
}students exploiting security holes and don't tend to notice such
}things or complain about them. With Unix and the sources you can at
}least plug up the hole by a code change and then call the vendor and
}wait for the real fix, at least you'll be up and running until then.
}Don't believe that VMS sources are available, it's a lie, demand to
}see prices for all items needed such as Decnet sources. Demand to be
}told what resources it would take to even manage such sources.  Last I
}checked it required the dedication of a few hundred thousand dollars
}in hardware (basically, an entire larger Vax with large disks) to
}manage sources.
Yep, but they are available, but rediculous to get.  Don't forget
that you need a $8000 Bliss compiler, and they won't guaruntee that
it will compile.  

}Obviously the sources will also be of enormous benefit in answering
}user questions, such as tracking down example code using particular
}system calls. You can sort of do this with VMS's microfiche, if you
}consider searching through microfiche for a particular system call
}usage a good way to spend your time. You can't grep microfiche. Even
}then you'll usually find that the way the system application
}accomplishes what the user seems to want to do is by exploiting some
}privilege you won't want to give to a user (I'm not sure I want to go
}into the whole mess of the zillions of VMS "privilege" bits which
}you'll never fully understand the implications of and will almost
}surely end up giving away the store because some reasonable thing can
}only be accomplished by giving a user some dangerous privilege bit,
}Unix's single privilege scheme [root or not root] is much more secure,
}you just don't give out root privs and you know exactly what can and
}cannot be done by the two sets of users on your system, who wants to
}calculate the permutations of 30+ priv bits and what they might imply
}singly and in combination?.)
I disagree.  It is nice to be able to give moderate level operator type
students OPER, to do operator things but not everything.  There are
a lot of bits and they do get complicated, but then usually a more
complicated system has more power.  For example it is somewhat harder
to get a root DCL on VMS because what is a root DCL.  That DCL
process will only have the priveleges it stole, not all of them.
... VMS is a hodepodge ...
}In an academic community one merely has to go into a campus bookstore
}to see another argument. Look at all the Unix books! Where are the VMS
}books?
They are in my bookstore, right next to the Unix books.  That wall
of orange is also unquestionably better and easier to read than the
Unix Docs.  But I would like to see the VMS Docs on line in a better
format than help.
}There are none. A complete set of Unix manuals costs less than $100, a
}more than sufficient set costs perhaps $50. A complete set of VMS docs
}costs several hundred dollars, no student or even faculty member
}(except the few richest) can afford to own a documentation set for
}VMS. There's some on-line help in VMS but it's designed to sell
}manuals or supplement them, the details are always missing
}(purposely.)
You pay for what you get in this case.

}Most Unix systems come with on-line, complete manual sets with the
}exact same text used to produce the printed manuals.  Thus, what's the
}cost to a student for Unix manuals? For $0 (zero) they can get
}everything, if they like manuals in their laps they can buy those for
}the cost of a couple of textbooks. 
But there is a cost to the instituion of each student printing these
out.  I am not saying that is bad, but there is a cost.
... note enough academic texts for VMS, I agree ...

}So, running courses on VMS will mean foresaking textbooks. Very clever!
}Good plan for running an academic environment! It's no accident, the
}DEC/VMS crowd has no interest in academia, your sysadmin has DP-envy.
DEC got where it is from academia.  I have seen them trying, but being
very torn about which direction to go.

... Decnet does not connect with the Arpa net ...
}And you can forget uucp and usenet entirely, which means no e-mail
}to vendors etc.
I believe there are implemenations of both.
Tek tcp is also reasonably priced.

}In summary, buying into VMS for a campus is buying into the past in a
}pathetic, nearly necrophilic way for an academic community. It locks
}them out of the mainstream in Computer Science, Engineering, the
}Sciences and many of the humanities (all the multi-media projects of
}any interest are being done on either Unix or or Macintosh/PC
}systems.) 
Isn't the Machintosh guilty of many of your arguments.  A much better
argument would be Unix or a Commodore Amiga.  The Amiga has supported
TCP/IP, FTP, TELNET for at least a year and a half that I can remeber,
and has had NFS for a while.  Much more reasonable for people wanting
to link in with Unix boxes at high speed.  
}It has very little to offer an academic community for either
}research or coursework. It is flying in the face of nearly all trends
}in computing today and doing so at such a high dollar price that it
}borders on irresponsible. This is not to say that there is no need for
}even one VMS system on your campus, there probably is. But using it as
}a campus standard is irresponsible and completely without merit or
}rational justification and will cripple academic computing for years
}to come. What other campuses do this?
Yes I would agree that as a campus standard it is not the way to go.
There should be no campus standard.  Students should have access to
many things to explore.
}This is not a religious flame, I have presented myriad factual basis
}for my arguments. VMS people like to claim religious flame and
}"chocolate vs vanilla!" arguments. This is because they cannot deal
}with the real issues so making it a political war can only act to
}their advantage. Avoid the issues, get the opponents fired, scare a
}campus administrator with false promises of donations etc.

}Unfortunately you may be up against an insidious cancer you only
}barely understand which will manipulate your organization in ways you
}will regret.

}	-Barry Shein, Boston University


You forgot NFS.  Let's not forget the Network File System of Unix.
Clearly a great boon to the argument of unix over VMS.

						Ross


-- 
csnet: ross@swan.ulowell.edu
uucp:  ross@swan.ulowell.edu || ...harvard!ulowell!ross

Trust the computer.	The computer is your friend.