On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 03:10:23PM -0500, Peter D. Ward wrote: > What you paint is a false dilemma. One merely needs to correspond > with those whose posts on Hercules indicate z/VM use, from which one > can determine that the vast majority trade illegitimately for their own > pecuniary purposes.
I'm not sure I believe all of this statement. I will grant that the majority (I'm not sure how you define "vast") of people running z/VM on Hercules are not doing so legally; other than the IBM folks who are entitled to use it, and myself (running on Linux/390), I'm unaware of anyone else running z/VM legally. Still, I don't think that the total z/VM user pool on Hercules is very large at all, and if there are a few other people like me (or IBMmers running z/VM legally because they're IBMmers), then "vast" may be a misnomer. However, I don't think that the majority of these people are doing so for their own pecuniary purposes. I will grant that some are. I'm curious as to how broadly you define "pecuniary purposes". I seriously doubt that a majority--let alone a vast majority--of the people running z/VM on Hercules are doing so for direct financial benefit by providing VM services on the platform. I think that number is very small. I think the number of people actively developing commercial VM apps on Hercules running z/VM is very small too. These are the uses I would consider "pecuniary purposes." I do not, of course, have any data to back up my suppositions, and anyone who would admit in public to either of these two things in the absence of a z/VM license for Hercules (and thus give us that data), is an idiot. I suspect that most people running z/VM are doing it simply because they can. This, by the way, is the reason I run an Atari 2600 emulator on Linux/390--I have a perfectly good (OK, OK, mostly good--one of the pins on the left controller connector is flaky) Atari 2600 here, and I can run Stella just fine on Linux/x86 too. Same with Bochs and Basilisk II; I also have much better ways to run NT or a Mac, but it's fun to see if it'll fly. Fact is, it's also the reason I'm running z/VM on Hercules under Linux/390; I have no pressing problem that's being solved by making my VM system run 100 times slower. However, it strikes me that you may consider putting a z/VM system down on Hercules in order to learn how to operate z/VM, and then, having done that, selling your services as a z/VM systems programmer, to be "pecuniary purposes." If so, then the number probably does go up quite a bit. I don't view this as "pecuniary purposes," myself, any more than I did learning Linux by playing with a Linux box and then being able to eventually sell my Linux skills. Do you include self-education in "pecuniary purposes?" Adam
