| Open letter to RSI about dropping Alpha Tru64 [message #27620] |
Thu, 25 October 2001 07:44 |
thompson
Messages: 584
Registered: August 1991
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Senior Member |
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This is a copy of a letter sent to RSI.
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Dear Sir or Madam:
I'm writing you as a private citizen about your recent decision to drop future
support for IDL on Tru64 Unix on the Alpha platform. Although the future of
this platform is limited, it is currently an important platform for our
project, and will be for several years in the future. It is too soon to drop
support for Tru64 Unix.
Although the number of computers running IDL on Tru64 may not be as big as some
other platforms, the influence and importance of these computers is far
greater. Alpha workstations are used by the instrument teams of at least two
instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO. Because the core
teams use IDL, universities and laboratories around the world who want to use
the data from these missions also purchase IDL. The strong support of IDL by
NASA has led to it being widely accepted by the astronomical community, and in
particular the solar physics community. I know for a fact that some
influential scientists associated with upcoming solar missions are now openly
questioning whether we can continue to depend on IDL, in the light of the
recent dropping of platforms. Even those who use platforms which are still
support worry that these may be dropped in the future.
Cross platform compatibility is very important to us. The software which we
develop is intended to work not only on our own computers, but on the computers
which are used by the worldwide scientific community which is using our data.
Thus, we write our software to work on all the platforms that our colleagues
use, as well as our own. For this reason, the announcement that the Macintosh
platform saddened me greatly, even though I don't personally use this platform.
RSI's decision to rethink this decision based on porting from the Unix version
of IDL is highly welcome, because I know that some of colleagues do use
Macintoshes.
One can understand that porting IDL to a completely new and different Macintosh
operating system, and maintaining the older Macintosh systems, would be a large
drain on resources. The same is true for OpenVMS, an earlier dropped platform,
because these systems are so radically different from the other platforms that
IDL runs on. However, it's difficult to understand how dropping Tru64 Unix
could represent a tremendous savings, since it's not that dissimilar to the
other Unix platforms that IDL runs on.
I also question how accurately RSI can determine how many of their customers
are using Tru64 Unix. Just before RSI made the announcement about dropping
platforms, I had just put in a purchase order for yearly maintenance for our
Tru64 and Windows platforms. However, many of our licenses are now floating
licenses, and may not be properly accounted for as being used on Tru64
platforms.
In summary, I ask you to rethink your decision to drop support for Tru64.
Although this decision may appear to be a good decision in the short term, I
hope that I've convinced you that it is bad decision in the long run.
Sincerely,
William Thompson
P.S. The views expressed here are my own, and do not represent those of NASA,
the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, or any other organization.
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