On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 3:48 AM Peter Corlett via cctalk < [email protected]> wrote
> > 2. Declare that we need to develop an open replacement. > > There is FreeVMS, but there also doesn't seem to have been any progress on > it > in the last decade and its domain has been lost and taken over by a > squatter. > > Writing an operating system is *hard*, way beyond a weekend's hacking > which is > how most open source projects get going. Cloning an existing one is > doubly-so > because it has to be bug-compatible. > > Linux has taken thirty years to get this far. It's arguable what is > "major" but > to a rough approximation, there are no good open source clones of other > operating systems of similar complexity: I'm aware of FreeDOS, AROS, > EmuTOS and > a few others, but they're relatively simple. > Linux never was a thing on the VAX that was very good. It was too late in its life cycle to get enough love. Linux and/or NetBSD/vax would be a good choice, though, to implement the VAX's system calls and execute it's binaries. Though there were more concerted efforts to do this years ago, but I don't know what became of them. Google shows a smattering of efforts littered with broken links. :( Warner
