> > on, I'm also likely to buy z/VM and probably some other software too.
>
> Laudable in principle, but what are the results? How many zSeries machines have
>been sold
> solely to run Linux? Is it three yet - out of 1,500 or so zSeries shipped?
How many shipped because Linux existed for S/390 - thats the important
question. Including the hard to quantify "cool factor" it gave the 390
instead of making everyone think of balding old farts who speak only JCL 8)
> > To sell me that zSeries, IBM needs all those OSS developers beavering
> > away and not costing them as much as a brass razoo.
>
> Linux is costing IBM money - there are IBMers developing for it and IBM has released
>open
> source code. To quote Irving Wladawsky-Berger: "IBMers are geeks bearing gifts".
What are the costings.. Hercules costs them nothing, it may have cost them a
tiny number of license sales of their own emulation. That I doubt for
two reasons - #1 big ibm customers are going to lump it in with their large
IBM global happy budget[1] #2 nobody else would consider paying the quoted price
but would instead buy something else. It certainly hasn't cost them real
production sales. If an x86 box running an unsupported emulator is good enough
the S/390 sales guy has a very hard sell to make ...
Then what are the gains - more people doing S/390 build for testing and also
able to look at S/390 specific bugs in general open source code. More
application availability - without Hercules there would be no Mumps for
S/390 for example.
Alan
--
First the west got slaves by raiding their nations
Then the west got slaves by invading their nations
Now the west gets slaves from unrepayable loans to their nations
Next the west will get slaves from owning their ideas
