Hi Glenn, Your comments have (so far) caused more than 30 customers to send me email with copies of what you have said about my utilities and (incidentally) about me. I have also received several phone calls and some email from other members of this list who are not customers of mine, and it might be a good idea for you to think before you make false statements, insinuations or accusations.
Actually The Automatic Command and the Command scripting facilitites predate your code by almost 20 and 10 years respectively. They have been renamed from their original names, several times over the years and the code has been updated to support newer levels of the OS and to perform a great number of new functions. There actually was some code in the command scripting program which was copied (with permission) from someone else, but that also predates your code by many years so that code can't possibly infringe on anyone's code. Your code MPFXTALL is actually very close to albeit a less elegantly implemented TSSO substitute, but you don't see me denigrating you or your abilities to the rest of IBMMAIN about that. You have the right to write any code you want and offer it in any way you see fit. Please remember that other people also have that same right. When someone uses my code that I have provided freely, in its entirety or in part, it's not considered copyright infringement, you can't infringe on a copyright that doesn't exist. What could you possibly have been thinking when you said what you said? I have been writing code for IBM, and many non-IBM vendors for a very long time. There are several routines and parts of sub-systems that you use every day on z/OS, assuming you have a job working with z/OS, that were written by me. I have been contributing code to SHARE and CBT and many other places for a LONG long time, and I still submit source code for people to share and to help them learn how to code things for themselves. The fact that I no longer share the SOME of the code for several of the utilities we support has nothing to do with anything except the economics of the situation. There are currently over 1,700 ACTIVE utilities and programs that I personally have written with a combined well over 700,000 currently active lines of code, (and probably more than twice that in the in-active/obsolete code that I still keep around "just-in-case"). I even have code that I wrote just to keep track of my code. :) Some of my code is not shared because of the time and effort involved in testing, updating and keeping the code functioning at a level that makes no compromises and is reliable, sometimes it's because the code is too dangerous to provide to people who might not have the skills level to use it properly. Sometimes it's because the code is just so cool that I feel that it's worthy of being marketed. :) It has nothing to do with hiding code from other people. The sad fact is that there are very few people now-a-days that even know how to code effectively in assembler, and the pool keeps getting smaller. I'm a bit distressed by your insinuation that there might be some copyright infringement going on because my code isn't copied from anyone, especially not you, as your coding techniques are not on the same level as mine. Although my code has obviously been copied time and time again, but that's what I contribute it to be used for. If people are copying your code, and you don't like it, then remove it from CBT. I'm sure no one is forcing you to keep it there. You might want to remember in the future about the possible cost of making these kinds of accusations. Not everyone is as easy going as I am and I'm sure you don't want to get a letter from someones lawyer, especially not mine because he is NOT a very nice person. It can get quite expensive for you. At first I was offended by what you said, then I realized how silly it was for you to make that accusation, based on what obviously little knowledge you have of me or my coding talents (or lack thereof). :) I hope that this is the end of this particular subject, it's not really the kind of forum where you should be making accusations like that, and I don't like to get email from people (especially customers) who are worried that someone might be "slandering" me. If this is not the end of this, or if I get many more calls/email, or if I lose even one single customer due to your statement, you will be receiving some paperwork from our corporate lawyer. Actually an apology to me from you might go a long way right about now. Brian Westerman Syzygy Incorporated (800) 767-2244 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
