Re: Re: slanted article "Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson"

On 24 September 2010 19:48, Paul Raulerson <[email protected]> wrote:

> You want one measure that would help?
>
> Make Hercules unable to run z/OS or z/VM except when it is running on IBM hardware.
>
> Make that rock solid impossible to bypass condition somehow - or have Roger or Jay express the desire to do so to IBM and gain their assistance in doing it - and IBM would almost certainly
> talk about licenses for major OS's under those provisions.  At least for the sub 1000 MIP world.

The licence under which Hercules is distributed makes that essentially
impossible. It's rather like adding DRM to Linux; no one is opposed if
someone wants to do it, and indeed it's been done, but it can't be
made compulsory.

Hercules already has at least one feature that one could suggest is a
gesture to IBM: the user must indicate by a keyword in the
configuration file that s/he knows the guest operating system requires
licensing. Trying to IPL z/OS without this keyword will fail. Even the
name of this keyword is cast in IBM's favour; really the lack of the
keyword just means that all processors look like IFLs, which will
reportedly run z/VM (and quite possibly other non-z/OS IBM OSs - I
don't know). Perhaps the official binary distributions could have this
option removed entirely, so that they would run only Linux and the
like. But because it's open source, anyone could simply change the
couple of lines that control this, and recompile.

Tony H.