On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Alan Cox wrote: > Then what are the gains - more people doing S/390 build for testing and also > able to look at S/390 specific bugs in general open source code. More > application availability - without Hercules there would be no Mumps for > S/390 for example.
Interesting. Consider a snippet from the April 15th update described at http://www10.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux390/exp-2_4_17.shtml Description: Dasd device bringup. Symptom: The system crashes in dasd device bringup. Problem: The bottom half can be called early with a request on the block device queue. The bottom half requeues the request to the internal dasd queue although the device is in a state where this may not happen yet. Solution: Plug the device while it is initialized. Examine the diff updates to dasd.c. Contrast this to http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.23791 Coincidence ?? I don't think so. Alan's point is already proved. I think I can safely testify that this was not a trivial piece of debugging work; I was first made aware of the problem in late November. I can also rather confidently testify that without available source that I would not have identified the problem in the same timeframe. What would happen in a closed source environment such as z/os ?? But, according to Phil Payne, I can be politely described as a `mug'. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390/message/17770). `mug' or not, I think this could be an example where IBM benefited not only from opensource but also from hercules. As an observation, I think a `fair number' of hercules users are rather well-versed in IBM mainframe software/os installation. A fair number of these are/were system programmers. A fair number believe in the mainframe and its capabilities, and are advocates of IBM mainframe technology. I would venture to guess that the number of man-years in experience of IBM mainframe technology by hercules users is staggering. But, I'm only a `mug'. I suppose we're actually much better off living in Phil's perfect world. Greg Smith
