McKown, John wrote:
And what about people who develop alternative software? If SDSF is free, then what happens to EJES? If DB2 is free, then what happens to Oracle and other RDMSes that run on z/OS? If RMM were free, then what about CA-1? And so on down the line.
For IBM this issue was settled in the mid-sixties, when Applied Data Research sued them, claiming free copies of CRBE (and CRJE?) impacted sales of ROSCOE. IBM was "forced" to start charging for software, and to sell ROSCOE (although I'm not aware that they ever sold a copy that way).
Apparently IBM's lawyers have an interesting definition of software, as I recall getting free programs (Field Developed Programs) in later years (e.g., VSAM Catalog fixer).
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, VT new e-mail address: gerhardp (at) charter (dot) net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
