| To some extent this is true. One, used to be Fortune 50 but now probably not even Fortune 1000 famous corporation has been "going to replace TOLAS on OpenVMS" for the past 20+ years. Every attempt, without exception, has failed spectacularly. Now every attempt will fail because everyone who knew the business rules which went into the code modifications is either retired or dead. If management decided to "just pull the plug" and install some worthless Oracle or SAP or (insert big named software package here) the lawsuits for contract violations would bankrupt the company 5 times over. Despite _constant_ denial by a good many people who claim to be "in the know" OpenVMS is still heavily used by defense contractors and various Homeland Security/DOD groups. Once you purge _all_ OpenSource from it the OS really is rock solid and secure. During the time around the Bejing (sp?) Olympics, the largest and most modern Chinese steel mill was being designed and scheduled to be built after the games. The came to America for a custom control system written in FORTRAN running on OpenVMS. I know because I architected it. A certain very famous brewer of dark beer in Ireland supposedly uses it to make their tasty beverages. Most steel and paper mills around the world run OpenVMS for process control. A large number of nuclear power plants as well. Putting it bluntly. OpenVMS, with _all_ OpenSource removed, is the OS humans bet the species on each and every day. If you want to read a novella which has a big section discussion what happens when OpenVMS suddenly doesn't exist you should read this: http://lesedi.us/ It's the middle book of the "Earth That Was" trilogy. Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars |