• kristopolous 3 days ago

    Something I didn't know that according to wikipedia, hpux is still being developed. I thought it had stopped with the pa-risc machines being killed off. Anyone here still using it?

    Also, apparently, OpenVMS releases are still rolling out as well.

    I'm glad these things are still happening but I can't imagine they're profitable. Am I missing something?

    • sneed_chucker 3 days ago

      It's definitely profitable in terms of support contracts.

      But make no mistake, any place that is still running these legacy systems like commercial Unix (HPUX, AIX), OpenVMS, IBM i (aka OS/400 aka System/38) or mainframes is only doing so because they have to.

      • mrpippy 3 days ago

        HP-UX also ran on Itanium, those were on sale until 2021. No one bought those without a support contract, and probably some guarantee of support for at least 10 years.

        • kristopolous 2 days ago

          If I was at HP I'd push hard for a RISC V port and then try to introduce mirco-hpux, specifically designed to fit within the gaps of server racks, sucking minimal power while providing essential OOB and management features.

          They could thrive in that space for at least the next decade

        • Palomides 3 days ago

          I think they do some kind of bare minimum security update release once per year, so "still being developed" is a stretch, they're probably just milking the support contracts. afaict the last server HP-UX will run on ended sales in 2020.

          openvms got spun out into a tiny little company and is at least somewhat alive

          • kristopolous 3 days ago

            Right. My imagined reason was they signed ambitious contracts a long time ago that promised some decades of support and they're running it in a way that's less then the penalty they'd have to pay for breaching the contract. This works with the modem Jack Welchified HP.

            But again, that's pure imagination.

          • dlachausse 3 days ago

            OpenVMS has even been ported to x86-64 architecture.

            • nubinetwork 3 days ago

              > Anyone here still using it?

              Sadly $dayjob still uses it... it's on a decommissioned server that they supposedly can't shut off yet.