>Is it legal for you to download .net without owning a windoze license and then >to run it under, e.g., ODIN, wine? If not, then it is not free.
Parts of the .Net Framework are Open Source. Google "MONO Project" for more info. Like the following statement: Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. Sponsored by Xamarin, Mono is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime. A growing family of solutions and an active and enthusiastic contributing community is helping position Mono to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications. But whether the .Net Framework is free, almost free, or cheap is hardly relevant to the original discussion about a successful Legacy Migration from a UNISYS Clearpath mainframe to Windows. What matters is whether the Migrated System delivers equal or better results than the Legacy System at significantly lower cost. It is my experience that: (1) Most Legacy Migration Projects are justified on the basis that the Target Environment will be really cheap, probably considering only the costs of the hardware and software licenses. (2) Cost comparisons with the Legacy Environment are really "apples to oranges" comparison, since the chargeback rates for the Legacy Environments are fully burdened with all the overhead of office space, power, air conditioning, system programmers, IT managers, disaster recovery etc. (3) The estimates to perform the migration are often low. A lot of IT managers think that code migrations are achieved by pushing the code thru code conversion tools. In reality this is a small part of the job. The biggest part is solving all the hundreds of little problems that arise. (4) Still, in the end, most successful migrations deliver a positive ROI, but perhaps much less than originally hoped. Also, a significant percentage of migrations fail, for all the same reasons that many other IT projects fail (incompetent management, lack of planning, etc.). John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
