Well said. Clem
Ian wrote:
IBM already do give software "away" You can get the "WAS Community Edition" as well as the DB2 Express Community edition. You can develop applications using DB2 Express-c and sell it for profit. Microsoft actively tries to get Mainframe shops to convert to the MS Data Center product or at leats prevent new customers to even think about the mainframe. Take a look at these pictures of adds at the Gartner Expo in Vegas this week (http://www.pcs305.com/node/182) Why do they do this? Because that is how you get interest going in your product in the IT industry today. How can you possibly expect college students or high school students to show interest in a product that they can only read about? They can go and download free operating systems, free database systems, free transaction processors anytime they want and they cah start a business based on that in a basement and build it into a billion Dollar company. (Google, Amazon, yahoo, SugarCRM etc.) But if to get close to a mainframe that same studnt will have to: 1) finish college (where no classes in "Manframe was presented") 2) join one of very few companies with a mainframe 3) be boxed in to what the company wants him to develop or work on. I don't think we will see talent flocking to the mainframe anytime soon based on this model. Using Hercules you can run z/OS on Linux. Why not make it available? Same goes for CICS. Make it available for free too developers and hobbyists. (I did write about this in the past here http://www.pcs305.com/node/140 ) The only thing that will happen is more applications will be developed and IBM will gain more users. If IBM does not do something actively to get the mainframe's going it will disappear in the near future. And I don't think that the Mainframe users really cares. If they were hobbyists and were formed into well developed communities that would be a different scenario... Thats my 2 cents... Ian http://www.pcs305.com
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