David Crayford is spot on. FWIW, I wrote this in 2009 on this topic: http://oss4zos.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Original_oss4zos_manifesto
CBT is fantastic, but the idea behind the oss4zos.org site was about organizing a community to port FOSS Unix software to z/OS. This never got much traction, although Timothy Sipples did some nice work organizing the site. I would advocate two things: 1) A community that ports FOSS software to z/OS. All patches are open source and contributed up-stream if possible 2) Vendors can package selected parts and add value and support This is how FOSS works everywhere else. No one has convinced me that it wouldn't work on z/OS if there were sufficient demand. What IBM did with "IBM Ported Tools" was to offer (2), but skip (1). And NO GPL licensed packages were included. If anyone is interested in contributing to the Wiki, please send an introductory email to [email protected] and we will create a userid for you. (We didn't enable self-enrollment so as to keep out nasty wiki spammers) Kirk Wolf Dovetailed Technologies http://dovetail.com On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 9:33 AM, David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote: > Support is important if a customers wants to run open source in > production. But that hasn't stopped the masses. Just look at Linux > and just about every important piece of software of the last decade or so. > It's a tangible idea, but needs to be backed by paid support > just like Rocket are doing with ported tools. > > z/OS is starved of decent tools. Almost every programming language has > it's roots in the 60s, 70s or 80s. It's time for a change. And I > don't mean Java, which isn't really a step up in terms of productivity. > > > On 3/10/2013 7:39 PM, David Griffiths wrote: > >> Hi, I'd like to find out how much interest there would be in a wider >> range and more up to date ports of common open source software >> utilities and also more low cost utilities. Kind of like a z/OS "app >> store" where customers could go to easily purchase or download for >> free such small programs. (Leaving to one side for now the question of >> how we get there!) >> >> Would a mainframe client consider using software (applications, tools, >> utilities, etc) in an app store like model, where the product >> roadmaps, support, or updates are less well established, too risky? >> Does your company have policies today that would preclude you from >> using software in this model? >> >> (Disclaimer: I work for IBM but am canvassing opinion in a completely >> unofficial capacity.) >> >> Cheers, >> >> Dave >> >> PS: apologies if you've seen this message before - I thought the >> google group was a gateway to this list! >> >> ------------------------------**------------------------------** >> ---------- >> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >> send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN >> > > ------------------------------**------------------------------**---------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
