On Wednesday 04 December 2002 03:25 pm, you wrote: > Dean, > > Interesting thoughts ... > > Basically IBM is a corporation with stockholders. A 'for profit' > corporation. They will do things that they believe will earn them money. > IBM is very interested in earning money (as are most if not all > corporations). The key to this discussion is to come up with a way for IBM > to earn money on a 'hobbyist' license. Something has to fund (pay for) the > license and the IBM personal handling distribution/maintance/support of > said license. License security (legal usage) is another issue (I will > ignore that for now). > > Find a way for IBM to make a profit on a hobbyist license and they will do > it. Remember IBM is a very large company. Their cost structure is much > higher than you think. Suggesting a way for IBM to make $100,000 is not > going to make it. $100K (or $1 million) is not even on any IBM managers > radar screen. > > Does PWD make money? Probably not but the $13K/$20K everyone complains > about probably does not even cover the cost of IBM running the project. > Remember, NO AD/CDs any more and PWD costs have largely been moved to > T3/Cornerstone as distributors. Most PWD personal are now doing something > else. IBM has lowered their costs by moving the PWD program outside IBM but > T3/Cornerstone have to make money too.
So why all this hoohaa about IBM being risk-averse to the hobbyist license idea? If IBM isn't making any money on their current Big Iron on PC setup, set as it is at such a low rate - for Big Iron that is. The reason I see - and others will back me up - for a hobbyist license is to interest those hackers and hobbyists who find the concept of BIG IRON inherently interesting, in the IBM mainframe. Harry Singh in "UNIX for MVS Programmers" makes the point that Unix and "Open Systems" got so big because they were more economic than the Big Iron, once you factored in all the people coming out of training with Unix skills and knowledge. Once you factor in that Big Iron is superior to Distributed Systems for heavy batch work, then IBM's refusal to open a hobbyist license seems absurd. If the reason why Big Iron went downhill so fast was most of the non-batch stuff was cheaper with "Open Systems" and uni-trained staff, then for the shareholders' sakes, you'd expect they'd tolerate a little "ablation" around the edges to keep the Big Iron business healthy. If it means they'd have at least 10-20% more trained (self-trained) Big Iron programmers, sys-admins, whathaveyou, it should be a workable business proposition - well, apparently the DB/2 people think so. Check out the DB/2 web sites - the free personal use download ones are the ones I'm thinking of - and yes, they apparently got the head honchos to see it their way. it's in competition with Oracle, and Oracle is in competition with Microsoft, which doesn't give their SQLServer away - just expects that we the customers will follow "For we like sheep ..." Until IBM adds all its batch-processing stuff to Linux and makes it the batch-processing successor to MVS etc, they're still going to be trying to sell Big Iron for MVS et al., and with the current rate of natural attrition of Big Iron programmers, they're going to find it harder and harder. > > Complain if you want but the reality is if you want a hobbyist license you > have to find a way for IBM to make money on it. Heck, you might get them to > at least listen to you if you could find a way for them to break-even on > the license (but I doubt it). Heinlein in The Space Family Stone has them selling all sorts of goodies to asteroid miners, on the basis that the miners in a gold rush never made any money - only the shop keepers that followed them And there's always that saying about selling the sizzle, not the steak. I suppose it's true. We're asking IBM to consider the sizzle of 10-20% more programmers, etc, for Big Iron, as against the steak of $13,000 for people in business with a written-down business plan, etc, which they can also run in parallel - but of course, keeping them quite separate. If you want to train yourself in Big Iron, you go for the hobbyist license - if you want to start a business, you go for the $13,000 license with IBM's blessings! Of course, once you have your 10-20% more trained programmers, you have that many more people who can cobble together a believable business plan based on their knowledge of Big Iron. Wesley Parish > > Regards, > Jeff -- Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."
