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

On Sep 24, 2010, at 8:27 PM, Jay Maynard wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 08:13:39PM -0500, Paul Raulerson wrote:
> > On Sep 24, 2010, at 7:08 PM, Jay Maynard wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 06:48:25PM -0500, Paul Raulerson wrote:
> > > > Now where exactly does Hercules have any of those issues? Indeed, IBM has
> > > > largely ignored it, which indeed, may be one measure of determining that
> > > > it does NOT have those faults.
> > > No, they've largely ignored Hercuels because they know quite well the PR
> > > disaster that going after it would generate.
> > What PR disaster?
> 
> "IBM Squashes Open Source Project!"
> 
> IBM has invested a lot of time, effort, and money into making themselves out
> to be the good guys in the open source world. To squash Hercules would be to
> largely destroy that in one stroke.
> 
> > Just how many mainframers do you think there are in the world, and how
> > many of them are advocates of Hercules? Admittedly, pretty much every
> > Hercules advocate is a mainframer, but the reverse is not true.
> 
> Wrong question. It's not the mainframers that count here. It's the open
> source folks who have adopted IBM in one way or another.
> 

No - it is actually the right question Jay. What other open source project
has any potential to affect the mainframe OS market?  

And IBM is a heavy supporter of the open source world, but it is also a 
for profit enterprise. 

> 
> > Have you used z/PDT? I seriously doubt it is going commercial. For one
> > thing, there is really no \ money in it for IBM. For another, it is a bit
> > of a support nightmare for them, since it is difficult indeed to get the
> > thing running without some serious performance humps.
> 
> Nope. Don't have a spare $3K.
> 
> 
With no first hand experience, you consider z/PDT any kind of a jab at Hercules?
What is the real difference between them? 

z/PDT is a controlled platform that for all intents and purposes, is a 
sibling child of Hercules - and guess what? IBM licenses z/OS and z/VM and
a ton of other goodies for use on it. At least for developers and sales. 

This sounds a lot like emotion rather than clear thinking. Emotional 
stuff is fun, I guess, but it takes clear thinking and pinning down the 
facts to get things done. 

> > Well, I should think the answer is obvious. It would not be an open source
> > package any longer. At least some part of it - some critical part - would
> > not.
> > 
> > I told you it would not be particularly palatable.
> 
> s/not be particularly palatable/be flatly impossible/
> 
> 
It is obviously not impossible, and perhaps not even particularly
difficult. You can do it with a dongle, a little add on oco module,
and by fiddling a bit with the microcode in real hardware. 

Rephrase that to "you don't want any part of
Hercules to be closed/commercial" and it comes a lot closer to the truth.

Why? 

Technically, Linux is about the only modern OS that is legal to run on Hercules.
What aggravates people is pretty simple, if a little ugly. 

It's illegal to run z/OS on Hercules.  If IBM could license it, then to run z/OS,
a person would have to license it, regardless of whether or not there is any cost
involved. 

People don't like that. 

When you get down to it, most of the talk about companies being hurt and
nobody being able to make a dollar off z/OS without buying IBM hardware,
all comes down to that. 

People don't want IBM to control when and where they can run z/OS. 

And I understand that.  I even sympathize. 

But the fact is, if IBM doesn't want to let us play with their toys, there is no 
legal, moral, or ethical reason to compel them to do so. 

> To take any portion of Hercules out of the open source world would destroy
> the project. There's no way in hell it will happen, period.
> 
> 
Well, you voiced you opinion on that one. You are saying the cost to be 
able to run z/OS on Hercules is too high, if we have to give up the capability
to easily run it illegaly. 

> > > That's a technical "solution" to a marketing problem, and as with any such,
> > > it's doomed to failure.
> > Huh- says who? Technical solutions to marketing problems are the ONLY kind of 
> > solutions that actually work.
> 
> Do you work in marketing?
> 
> Any techie knows that technical solutions fix technical problems, and
> marketing problems need marketing solutions. This is the lesson the RIAA
> refuses to learn.
> 
> 
Who is this "any techie?" He sure doesn't come around here. 

The RIAA - now that group fits my definition of evil buzzards. About the 
only person who has been able to beat that bunch into submission is 
Jobs. More power to him. 

Oh wait - he did it by waving a lot of dollars under their noses didn't he? 
A billion $0.99 downloads? 

And I may be wrong, but it seems to me like Apple uses a ton of technical
solutions to solve marketing problems.  

Marketing types may churn in a froth of ideas, but it takes real practical
technical solutions to make those ideas work at all. 

Perhaps we are talking past each other here, but honestly, I wonder if 
your tone is sarcastic or not. If it is, then I wonder how you can be about
the same age I am without learning the facts of how the world goes 
around. 


> > > At this point, the only thing that will result in Hercules being accepted by
> > > IBM is regulatory action. They've had 10 years to embrace it, and have done
> > > the exact opposite. If they were going to embrace it, z/PDT wouldn't exist.
> > Well, we have different opinions. 
> 
> Obviously
> 
By the way, I have spent about as much time discussing this over and over here
as I am willing to share. I will read anyone's responses, but I won't reply in public.

Guess Hercules will need to be around another few years before the community gets
over the anger bit, and really determines to move forward with convincing IBM to compromise.
It's a shame, but we have lost nothing, and still have one of the worlds most fun 
playgrounds to use. 

> -- 
> Jay Maynard, K5ZC http://www.conmicro.com
> http://jmaynard.livejournal.com http://www.tronguy.net
> http://www.hercules-390.org (Yes, that's me!)
> Buy Hercules stuff at http://www.cafepress.com/hercules-390
> 



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