[davesmylie]

I was actually surprised to see that there's been a release in the last 12 months - I had thought it was dead.

I used it extensively in the late 90's early 00's and really liked it. As a newb sysadmin at the time, the built-in versioning on the fs saved me from more than one self-inflicted fsck up.

I can't imagine there would be any green-field deployments in the last 10 years or so - I'm guessing it's just supporting legacy environments.

[lproven]

> I can't imagine there would be any green-field deployments in the last 10 years or so - I'm guessing it's just supporting legacy environments.

This is not entirely the case.

I have been writing about VMS for years. The first x86-64 edition, version 9, was released in 2020:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/10/openvms_92/

Version 9.0 was essentially a test. 9.1 in 2021 was another test and v9.2 in 2022 was production-ready.

There's no new Itanium or Alpha hardware, and version 8.x runs on nothing else. Presumably v9.x is selling well enough to keep the company alive because it's been shipping new versions for a while now.

Totally new greenfield deployments? Probably few. But new installs of the new version, surely, yes, because VMS 9 doesn't run on any legacy kit, so these must be new deployments.

It's been growing for a few years. Maybe not growing much but a major new version and multiple point releases means somebody is buying it and deploying it. Never mind no new deployments in a decade... more new deployments in the last few years than in the previous decade.

[Kon-Peki]

> I had thought it was dead.

HP tried to kill it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years ago they announced the EOL. This company - VMS Software Inc (VSI) was formed specifically to buy the rights and maintain/port it. So you have an interesting situation.

Old VAX and Alpha systems are supported, supposedly indefinitely, but if you have an Itanium system it has to be newer than a certain age. HP didn’t sell the rights to support the older Itaniums, and no longer issues licenses for them. So there is a VMS hardware age gap. Really old is ok. Really new is ok.

[rbanffy]

It's now ported to x86 as well, so you can probably just order a Dell box and install OpenVMS on it.

[rbanffy]

MCP and MVS (now called z/OS) are all still supported. Not sure whether MCP still receives updates though.

[skissane]

> Not sure whether MCP still receives updates though.

MCP Release 21 came out in mid-2023, and release 22 is supposed to be out middle of this year, with further releases planned: https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/microsites/clearpath-futur...

Looking at new features, they seem to be mainly around security (code signing, post quantum crypto) and improved support for running in cloud environments (with the physical mainframe CPU replaced by a software emulator)

Unisys’ other mainframe platform, OS 2200 is still around too, and seems to follow a similar release schedule - https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/microsites/clearpath-futur... - although I get the impression there are more MCP sites remaining than OS 2200 sites?

[quesomaster9000]

Right, but z/OS is part of a larger longer-running hardware strategy that, with virtualization, serves the needs of mixed-OS workloads and multi-decade tenures overseeing 24/7 systems.

The corpse of OpenVMS on the other hand is being reanimated and tinkered with, presumably paid for by whatever remaining support contracts exist, and also presumably to keep the core engineers occupied with inevitably fruitless busywork while occasionally performing the contractually required on-call technomancy on the few remaining Alpha systems.

VMS is dead... and buried, deep.

It's a shame it can't be open-sourced, just like Netware won't be open-sourced, and probably has less chance of being used for new projects than RiscOS or AmigaOS.