Re: Peter still in misery (was: Jan doesn't want Peter to know (was: Peter wants

Peter,

I would like to respectfully disagree with Your assumption that 
there must be something radically new from a technological 
standpoint to trigger change in IBM policy, even in the face of very 
strong precedent.

It strikes me that when your company developed FLEX-ES, emulation 
was already quite well established and many fine emulators for 
various platforms had already been written.  Still, though the 
concept of emulating the architecture of one platform upon another, 
completely different platform was not cutting-edge, the existance of 
FLEX-ES triggered many changes in IBM policy, involving many 
reversed precedents.  Even without this example, I would disagree 
with your premise.  Nor do I believe that there need be any publicly 
obvious trigger for IBM to ignore precedent and change policy; IBM 
changes have apparently often come out of the Blue.  In this case, 
perhaps the trigger will be that Hercules is an open source project, 
is free of charge and is already used to one extent or another by 
thousands of hobbyists.  There are other potential pressures upon 
IBM as well.  

For example, there is the greying of the Systems Programming force 
combined with what amounts to The Great Depression II, at least as 
it affects mainframe employment.  I, for example, have left the 
field at age fifty-five and might well never return.  When the 
economy recovers, if ever, the current defectors will further 
deplete the available pool and this might well affect the decisions 
by potential customers to buy big iron.  There are relatively few 
young mainframe SysProgs, but a surprising number of what young 
SysProgs and SysProg wannabees there are have tried Hercules.  To 
me, it makes a great deal of sense.  The idea of running mainframe 
software on a PC is seductive, indeed.  To FunSoft, it's a business, 
and a very good one, too.  To us, it's an adventure.  I started my 
career with an adventure, and others might well, too.

Of course, IBM's current policy is clearly to do away with the need 
for traditional mainframe Systems Programmers.  If they are 
successful, the point will be moot and this particular argument of 
mine will be vacant.  Of course, only time will tell whether or not 
they will be successful.  In the meantime, I see that policy as 
analogous to many of their customers fruitlessly trying to replace 
mainframes with clusters of glorified PCs (and I'm not referring to 
PCs running FLEX-ES, which I still consider mainframes for the sake 
of the argument).  

IBM doesn't have a crystal ball any more than you or I do.  
Moreover, there are competing factions among IBM's policy makers.  
As we argue the issue here, they might well be arguing in 
Poughkeepsie, Manhattan, Hursley Park and elsewhere over these same 
issues.  One side might be saying, "if we make z/OS as easy to 
maintain as Windows, our customers will need no Systems 
Programmers."  The other side might be saying, "Good heavens, why 
would you want to emulate Microsoft?  Look at the result!"  Assuming 
this hypothetical argument exists, there might well be dozens of 
intermediate positions as well as dozens of related positions I 
haven't considered.  It is also hypothetically possible, since IBM 
is well aware of Hercules and its hobbyist base, that a faction is 
already considering a very limited hobbyist license, one which would 
prevent hobbyists from running anything like production work under 
Hercules, thus protecting both their business interests and yours.  
Many such models have been discussed on these lists.

Regards,
Bomber

--- In [email protected], "Peter D. Ward" 
<pdw-8vCV/[email protected]> wrote:

<snip>
> Now, if what's cutting edge about Herc is emulation, then there
> exists precedent that seems directly applicable, namely experience
> as I 've reported it in bringing an emulator to market through the
> IBM thicket.  If there is something else cutting edge about Herc
> for which that precedent is not as good a guide, I am open to
> learn of it.


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