RE: Re: What Are the Chances That CICS/VS will Be Available for DOS/VS Under Hercules???

>I can make the argument why a free / cheap "not for profit" education /
hobby license would be a good thing for IBM, even >for their current
products. I'm sure that many new people would be attracted to the
architecture, if they could get "hands >on" time to learn it. Most of us old
grey-beards are already gone, or nearing retirement, or have moved on to
"more modern >tech". IBM needs new people that understand the mainframe,
it's obvious, and they've admitted as much more than once.

This is a techy approach. IBM is driven by marketing geeks who are entirely
image conscious. I am sure they want Mainframes to remain unknown territory.
They sell system ZSeries to Senior Managers on the basis that its
"different" to PC architecture, and because its different it has attributes
(performance reliability) which can't be obtained on i486/x64 machines. If
they were to admit that Hercules does a half decent job of emulating ZSeries
then senior managers may well be a much harder sell. Having worked in DEC
when they tried to sell Alpha boxes at two different prices, one for
Open/VMS or ULTRIX, and a much cheaper price for those running Windows I can
see how easy it is to destroy product value.  


>Plus it would allow us old geeks to stay involved, when the time comes that
we no longer have access to real iron. You 
>know, if it wasn't for all of us old nerds that wrote those billions and
billions of lines of Cobol, and Assembly, and 
>Fortran, and RPG, and PL/1, and CICS, and C code, IBM would NOT be as
successful as they are today, and that is a big fat 
>fact! If we had a "hobby" license, we could continue to make contributions
to the system. Some of those contributions may 
>even "catch on", maybe even catch on the way Linux did. In the end it could
result in IBM selling more hardware to support >our code! Imagine that!!! :)
:) :)

I am sure that all the old geeks are also an embarrassment...

>On the other hand, I can somewhat understand why IBM may not want to offer
such a license. Some people would abuse it, 
>some would try to "make a profit", that's just the nature of some people.
Still, I think they could enforce it. I'm all 
>for going after anybody that runs "pirated" software, on any hardware, to
make a fast buck...

I am sure this is not part of the argument.

>But S/370 operating systems and "program products"? I think they're about
as close to "abandonware" as you can get.

And IBM would really like them to stay that way. Why do they keep re-naming
the software -> To distance it from history. The fact that I can produce a
program on VM/370 that works and is useful on zVM is an utter embarrassment
to the marketing message IBM is trying to put across.  


>Hey IBM, since you're such a huge OPEN SOURCE promoter these days, with the
grand Linux push, why not show the world how 
>serious you are about open source. Give us the System/370 era code, like
VSE/SP. That would be a great start...

This requires them to admit the History of zOS. The IBM marketing machine
want folks to believe that today Mainframes have little relationship with
the past, and that System/Z is a "NEW" type of architecture. 

>BTS :)

--- In [email protected], "Fish" <fish@...> wrote:
>
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> (Thread moved from [H390-DOSVS] to here)
> 
> 
> Dave Wade wrote:
> > dosvsoperator wrote:
> >
> > > I can understand where IBM is coming from. They're scared
> > > that someone will try to run production IT of a "for profit"
> > > concern on a Hercules mainframe in violation of a license
> > > agreement! It's kind of a backhanded compliment to the emulator!
> > 
> > I think the paranoid runs deeper than that. In the past the
> > maintenance money paid for Maintenance and there was no need to
> > force upgrades on folks. These days, like the rest of the
> > "computer" industry, the whole Mainframe Marketing Bandwagon
> > relies on selling frequent upgrades to both Hardware and Software.
> [...]
> > [...] you are caught in a never ending spiral or hardware and
> > software upgrades. [...]
> 
> I think Dave has hit the nail on the head: the elimination of the
> "after-market" market (or more properly, the complete elimination of
> "hand-me-downs").
> 
> Thank about it. One company outgrows its capacity and must upgrade to a
new
> more powerful model. Their existing hardware isn't powerful enough -- for
> them. But who's to say it's not plenty powerful enough for some other much
> smaller company who has also outgrown their existing capacity? Why can't
> company A's system which IT has outgrown be "handed down" to the much
> smaller company B?
> 
> Because the software (specifically the operating system) required to RUN
> that system is no longer being licensed! You can only get it from IBM and
> IBM is no longer offering it. PURPOSELY.
> 
> That younger brother of yours (or next door neighbor) who has outgrown his
> clothes has to go out and buy NEW clothes because the old clothes his
older,
> bigger brother has outgrown is no longer available. The manufacturer has
> taken them back and is no longer offering them. In fact it wouldn't
surprise
> me if they've destroyed them.
> 
> And you of course can't use the newer operating systems on the older,
> smaller, less powerful hardware either because they're purposely designed
to
> work only on the newer hardware that has all the specialized hardware and
> instructions that they require to run.
> 
> End result? No more hand-me-downs. You MUST go out and buy new.
> 
> If IBM continued to license (offer) older versions of its operating
systems
> and software then they could be used by company B to run their enterprise
on
> company A's old used hardware, and company B would thus have no incentive
to
> purchase "new" hardware from IBM. The after-market market would grow and
> flourish! Older hardware would INCREASE in value as there would be more of
a
> demand for it, and the sales volume of new hardware (and software!) would
> suffer as a result.
> 
> In conclusion, to continue hoping that "maybe SOME day IBM will release
> [this/that old operating system/software]" is a complete waste of time in
my
> personal opinion. It's just NOT going to happen. :(
> 
> - -- 
> "Fish" (David B. Trout) - fish@...
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