Hewlett Pondlife's Shane Robison guiltless

I feel compelled to respond to the Robison-bashing article that materialized on your esteemed Web site. It--the bashing, not the site--is out of order and evidentally emanated from someone who has an axe to grind with Mr. Robison.

Let's look at the facts. First and foremost, Shane is no friend of Microsoft. Shortly after Shane's ascendency to power, Linux gained great visibility, incremental support, and even a Program Office. Numerous Windows apologists--including at least one very senior and very competent VP--were sacked. Suffice it to say that Mr. Robison is devoid of a "Microsoft Affinity" strategy.

During my several encounters with Shane, I've never heard him say anything one way or the other about VMS. Or, for that matter, NSK. Both of these "elderly" OSes--like IBM's MVS--have loyal followings and are terrific profit generators. I can authoritatively state that Shane can count and can read a P&L. And I believe he'd pass a Snelling Test with flying colours, so he's not part of the 10 percent of the male population with colour blindness. Which means he knows what red ink looks like, and there's none o' that on the VMS balance sheet. Quite on the contrary.

Shane doubtlessly was involved with the (now proven to be correct) scheme to euthanize Alpha when EV79 runs its course. He was also involved in the "what will stay and what will go" discussions that went on during the Clean Room era. VMS was designated as a "keeper" VERY early in that process.

So we've established that Shane likes Linux, and recognizes the cash cow status of VMS. Constant Readers of The Inq, www.openvms.org, and Shannon Knows HPC, et al, are aware that there's an active VMS-Linux interoperability effort underway. In fact, a VMS Ambassador from Dallas, TX just came out with a book on this very subject.

Whatever bottleneck there is in HP vis-a-vis VMS, it is NOT Shane Robison. Nor any of the ~200 VMS Ambassadors. Nor Mark Gorham or Rich Marcello. Nor Clair Grant and his VMS-to-Itanium porting platoon. VMS Engineering is NOT being downsized, hence it has not suffered the fate of its counterpart Tru64 UNIX Engineering group. VMS continues to be enhanced, at a not-insignificant expense. There's nothing wrong with VMS technology, so the alleged problem lies elsewhere. And that's a fact, Jack!

So where *does* the problem lie? If it's not in senior management, engineering, or technology, its gotta be somewhere else. And where might that be? The answer to the question is elementary, but shall be left as an exercise for the student.

Respectfully

One who has used, operated, and managed VMS systems for over 20 years
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