David, You seem to presume: 1) the costs of a PWD-offered solution are predominately attributable to the cost of the selected mainframe virtual machine, and 2) there is no reason for IBM's management to prefer one solution over another, and 3) that the solutions are exchangable. My belief is that this is wrong on all three counts.
The irony of your reply is we are talking about a development environment for a commercial version of sendmail, a product which, using the analysis you've supplied here, would have little to say for itself even though we know it has a valued place in the Linux enterprise firmament. As far as I can tell, IBM has yet to hear from even one developer of commercial software who would otherwise meet the conditions of software loan that the present PWD offering is prohibitive. I can assure you that were you able to convince IBM of a need for a developer platform and deployment model addressing a developer class beyond those who qualify for its program today, then Flex-ES could be packaged to meet that need within the bounds of costs you yourself have declared reasonable for such developers to pay. In other words, the issue is not the entry cost of the virtual machine, but rather IBM's programatic goals, which factors into who they are interested in providing access to a z/VM software stack and how they are interested in providing it.. PDW "db" wrote: > I am aware of the PID discount. I am also aware that the solution you > propose does not work well in a data center environment (ever tried to > reliably rack a Thinkpad? not easy), and that for me, the equivalent > Hercules environment (minus the ADCD CDs, which I can't license) costs me > the price of a 80 gig disk, which at the local discount outlet amounts to > about $115 plus tax, about $300 if I go super-duper Ultra160 SCSI. > > If IBM were to offer a single-user hobbyist license for the ADCDs in the $2K > to 3K range, controlling the use via T&Cs, then developing for S/390 starts > to look like a reasonable proposition to Joe Average Developer -- at that > rate, it's in the ballpark of buying this week's MS Visual Whatsis per seat, > and everybody's legal and above-board. For that price, I'll buy multiple > copies of the ADCD for developers and we're set. > > I have nothing against FlexES or the other environments, however $13K is not > trivial money, not everyone can or wants to meet the PID requirements, and > I've already got plenty of hardware that is rack-friendly and fully > integrated (and even has a nice blue IBM logo on it). When pricing a sample > system from other vendors using a similar solution to the one you described > (without the benefits of the PID program), you're talking about 45-70K for a > useful rack-mounted development system. Not cheap -- at that point, we're > into the used MP3K range. So, yes, it's a "goodly sum" -- that's not > negative, it's a plain observation that it's not something available to > everyone's budget. > > -- db
