Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Hi ZA. This concept of C is not available in many many shops is the exact reason I spent a large chunk of my life porting GCC to MVS (gccmvs). I considered the lack of a universal language for computers to be a serious flaw in the computer industry. With the advent of GCCMVS, C is now either bundled, or freely available, on every commercially-used computer environment, as far as I know. Even z/VSE has been covered. With GCC ported, I was able to port other very useful tools such as diff3 (three-way diffs are one of the greatest advances in computer science in my opinion). People can easily have a free MVS environment at home for developing such software. And if for some reason you need a real z/OS instead of MVS 3.8j, that is also available at an affordable price (z/PDT from memory). BFN. Paul. Bob Wrote: The open source Linux tools generally require porting, which require a mainframe, which most folks don't have at home, so open source isn't significant in the mainframe arena. This is the main issue really, getting a descent and legitimate development environment is tough. And then there is another, related subject, most open source is written in C which is NOT available in many many shops. It is a legitimate, fully developed and wonderful compiler in z/OS but it cost money and many shops just don't spend that money. So even if you go through the trouble of porting the open source into Classic z/OS (PDSE's, JCL, at al) as I did when I ported the PCRE library, it's not good enough because many potential users cannot build it anyway. Providing binaries might have been a solution had we not have to deal with the bizarre EBCDIC issue. The issue is not so much that EBCDIC is different then ASCII, that is relatively easy to handle. The issue is that if you provide a binary for IBM-1047 it surely won't work on a IBM-1026 Turkish or Greek or any other language. Bottom line, the port as well as it done is basically unavailable. I am pretty disappointed because I really wanted to start a trend. ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Hi gil. Making gcc a prerequisite might be onerous. I think any C compiler, including the freely available one - gccmvs, is a prerequisite is not onerous. And to my knowledge all z/OS ports of gcc are biased toward legacy data sets and against UNIX files, which I regard as a flaw. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that supporting RECFM=F/V/U is a flaw, and that instead all C ports should be using USS? If so, it is only GCCMVS that supports traditional datasets. The other port is here: http://www.cozx.com/~dpitts/gcc.html This site has source and pre-built versions of GCC compiler for the IBM z/OS Unix Systems Services (USS), OpenEdition, environment. The latest compiler was compiled under z/OS USS 1.1. Is that what you're considering to be non-flawed? BFN. Paul. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Anyone used it on z/OS? On Oct 30, 2013 5:38 PM, Mike Schwab mike.a.sch...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote: deleted Also, isn't gcc available for z/OS? http://gccmvs.sourceforge.net/ -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 4236639181988702.wa.paulgboulderaim@listserv.ua.edu, on 10/30/2013 at 10:16 AM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com said: So the programmer codes in a regex /[abc]/, where '[' and ']' are radically locale-sensitive. Must PCRE query the locale to suss out what '[' means, That would be reasonable. or translate all input and output to a canonical character set? That would also require knowing the locale, or at least the character set. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I know a couple of load modules were compiled and tested on z/OS then the binary downloaded and run on MVS 3.8 too. On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Rob Schramm rob.schr...@gmail.com wrote: Anyone used it on z/OS? On Oct 30, 2013 5:38 PM, Mike Schwab mike.a.sch...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote: deleted Also, isn't gcc available for z/OS? http://gccmvs.sourceforge.net/ -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 0137612305587011.wa.paulgboulderaim@listserv.ua.edu, on 10/29/2013 at 05:25 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com said: It could be worse than that. How would you compare two strings, otherwise identical, where the embedded word is, respectively, My mail reader can't handle UTF-8, so I'll decode by hand. If I didn't do it wrong those are: CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER PE CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EF CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A and HEBREW LETTER PE HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH HEBREW LETTER QOF I would expect them to compare unequal regardless of the locale, with the characters from page 4 preceeding the characters from page 5. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In caarmm9sj2zww1+wp9znexngtrt8wmvhkwjtfp08_qjpnrpz...@mail.gmail.com, on 10/29/2013 at 07:21 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net said: On 28 October 2013 19:36, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote: The locale-dependent services will treat a string as being in a single locale, so if you are using an English locale then How much does the chorizo cost? will sort according to US rules. If you are using the US English locale, perhaps. If you used either of, say, US Spanish or UK English, you would get different results. Different results, yes, the results you want, no. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In CAArMM9Qz9D-E=ormh7zbi3g8e+67janyxk+kmx3fd7mwr2l...@mail.gmail.com, on 10/29/2013 at 07:27 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net said: [Listserv decided that my message had already been posted, It had. I replied to the other copy. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On Wed, 30 Oct 2013 08:38:30 -0500, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: Isn't PCRE written in C? Yes, and that's why I had to provide binaries which is NOT ideal, because the binaries are IBM1047 specific What prevents you from testing the locale? Also, isn't gcc available for z/OS? So the programmer codes in a regex /[abc]/, where '[' and ']' are radically locale-sensitive. Must PCRE query the locale to suss out what '[' means, or translate all input and output to a canonical character set? This would be a massive source change, unlikely to be accepted back into the mainstream source tree (cf. Python). Making gcc a prerequisite might be onerous. And to my knowledge all z/OS ports of gcc are biased toward legacy data sets and against UNIX files, which I regard as a flaw. -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote: deleted Also, isn't gcc available for z/OS? http://gccmvs.sourceforge.net/ -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I get those too. Seems like the message is going two different routes (NSA feed?). Might be interesting to compare the list of IP addresses in the original the rejected duplicate. On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 8:30 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote: In CAArMM9Qz9D-E=ormh7zbi3g8e+67janyxk+kmx3fd7mwr2l...@mail.gmail.com, on 10/29/2013 at 07:27 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net said: [Listserv decided that my message had already been posted, It had. I replied to the other copy. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 29/10/2013 4:04 AM, Gord Tomlin wrote: But I now see from what Mr. Gilmore has been saying that I am perhaps wanting too much from a computer language. I will need to depend on the programmer actually doing the proper things in all of his/her programs. So that when I use chorizo in English it will show up before cider, but if I-the-programmer know that Spanish is the locale, that it is after ciudad. I don't know how this can be done generically. Especially if one throws words in Latin characters into a list with words in Greek characters. Intelligent string collation of the sort you are suggesting is probably something that would find a better home in a run time library or in a utility product, as opposed to being built right into a computer language. In fact, a Google search for locale sensitive string comparison shows that such facilities are available for several languages. IBM did a very good job with ICU. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In CAAJSdjgyhi03G1nw3MAiT06fMG1Y-=25wpwuuqpq8puga9x...@mail.gmail.com, on 10/28/2013 at 02:08 PM, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com said: I wasn't wanting to translate words. But when we do a comparison on the z, we basically just do a byte-for-byte compare. While CLC et all basically compare octets, there are locale-sensitive services in z/OS. chorizo The locale-dependent services will treat a string as being in a single locale, so if you are using an English locale then How much does the chorizo cost? will sort according to US rules. In addition, you want Unicode strings to be consistently normalized before comparing them. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 8360084032982097.wa.zatlas1yahoo@listserv.ua.edu, on 10/27/2013 at 08:00 AM, Ze'ev Atlas zatl...@yahoo.com said: because they do not have C and cannot build it. Isn't PCRE written in C? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 8164757574306449.wa.paulgboulderaim@listserv.ua.edu, on 10/28/2013 at 03:15 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com said: It's built into LE for z/OS. Locale-sensitive compares, perhaps, but not compares that will treat a word in the middle of a string as having a different locale from the rest of the string. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On Mon, 28 Oct 2013 18:39:46 -0500, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: Locale-sensitive compares, perhaps, but not compares that will treat a word in the middle of a string as having a different locale from the rest of the string. It could be worse than that. How would you compare two strings, otherwise identical, where the embedded word is, respectively, Пасха and פסח? -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 28 October 2013 19:36, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net wrote: The locale-dependent services will treat a string as being in a single locale, so if you are using an English locale then How much does the chorizo cost? will sort according to US rules. If you are using the US English locale, perhaps. If you used either of, say, US Spanish or UK English, you would get different results. Tony H. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On October 28 2013 19:36, Seymour J. Metz (Shmuel ) shmuel+ibm-m...@patriot.net said: [Listserv decided that my message had already been posted, and suggests changing a few characters. I have done so, in a way that I trust does not change the meaning of anything that matters.] The locale dependent services will treat a string as being in a single locale, so if you are using an English locale then How much does the chorizo cost? will sort according to US rules. If you are using the US English locale, perhaps. If you used either of, say, US Spanish or UK English, you would get different results. Tony H. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
because they do not have C and cannot build it. Isn't PCRE written in C? Yes, and that's why I had to provide binaries which is NOT ideal, because the binaries are IBM1047 specific ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Although many will likely disagree, I rather like that Java decided on using Unicode internally for all character data. The I/O subsystem translates that to the native encoding on input and output. On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 9:52 PM, Timothy Sipples sipp...@sg.ibm.com wrote: Please note that EBCDIC support is not a technical requirement for applications and tools running on z/OS unless those applications/tools need to operate directly with/on EBCDIC data. (But then that's not unique to z/OS-hosted applications/tools.) I think the better way to describe the situation is that z/OS customers often have a preference, perhaps even a strong one, for applications/tools that support EBCDIC when running on z/OS given that many have EBCDIC data they'd like to operate with/on. But it's certainly not a universal requirement, and there's absolutely no requirement to support EBCDIC in order to get an application/tool running on z/OS. Likewise, there's no *requirement* to support SMP/E installation, generate SMF records, plug into z/OS Resource Recovery Services, be ARM-aware, support any particular z/OS data storage method (such as VSAM), support 31-bit or 24-bit, leverage Coupling Facility structures, provide ISPF panels, etc., etc. Some/all of these features might be nice to have, but they are *not* required to get the application/tool ported and running correctly. It's very important not to overstate the scope. Timothy Sipples GMU VCT Architect Executive (Based in Singapore) E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough hunchbacks. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On Mon, 28 Oct 2013 08:26:31 -0500, John McKown wrote: Although many will likely disagree, I rather like that Java decided on using Unicode internally for all character data. The I/O subsystem translates that to the native encoding on input and output. No, Java decided to use a 16-bit subset of Unicode internally, with attendant, sometimes unpleasant, consequences. -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Well, I still like the _concept_ of an internal character set instead of using ISO8859-1, or CP-037, or . Personally, if it were me, I'd be looking at UTF-8 for internal coding. And somehow address the lexicographical sorting / comparison (if that's the proper phrase - I'll defer to others if I'm wrong) using some sort of locale information. Each I/O definition would define the locale of the external representation. This would determine how to transform it to/from the internal UTF-8 representation. It might even be nice if the language had a string data type which has the encoded locale of the data for that instance of the string value. Said locale [cw]ould be inherited when the string was read from an external source, or assigned from another string. I don't know what to do if, when writing, the locale of the data in the string did not equal the locale of the data stream, perhaps an exception should be thrown. OTOH, we could simply do the political thing and continue to punt the problem down the time stream, using ad-hoc solutions in the present. On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.comwrote: On Mon, 28 Oct 2013 08:26:31 -0500, John McKown wrote: Although many will likely disagree, I rather like that Java decided on using Unicode internally for all character data. The I/O subsystem translates that to the native encoding on input and output. No, Java decided to use a 16-bit subset of Unicode internally, with attendant, sometimes unpleasant, consequences. -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough hunchbacks. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 28 October 2013 11:56, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com wrote: Well, I still like the _concept_ of an internal character set instead of using ISO8859-1, or CP-037, or . No argument. The problem is that the Java developers used their understanding of the then nascent UNICODE standard, and hard-coded it in both the language and the JVM. To be fair, this was in the early 1990s, and they were early adopters of UNICODE at a time when there was still considerable resistance. Personally, if it were me, I'd be looking at UTF-8 for internal coding. And somehow address the lexicographical sorting / comparison (if that's the proper phrase - I'll defer to others if I'm wrong) It's often called culturally correct, but there's nothing wrong with lexicographical in this context. using some sort of locale information. Each I/O definition would define the locale of the external representation. This would determine how to transform it to/from the internal UTF-8 representation. Be careful not to muddle locale with character encoding. They are largely independent. The UNIXy concept of locale carries baggage like sort order(s), date and time of day representation, currency format, etc. It might even be nice if the language had a string data type which has the encoded locale of the data for that instance of the string value. Said locale [cw]ould be inherited when the string was read from an external source, or assigned from another string. It's far from clear that locale should follow strings around. Certainly character encoding needs to, but in a UNICODE-only world, there should be just the one. But the other aspects of the locale notion generally follow the end-user around, not the data or the instance of the desktop/mobile browser or OS. There are plenty of use cases for end users in different countries -- or simply with different cultural or personal preferences -- to view the same data with different results on sort and search. But requirements clash. For example, MS Project offers choices as to (among many others) which day the week begins on. My week starts on Monday, but (I imagine for reasons only of tradition) the Project default is to start on Sunday. This attribute attaches to the document, where I think it should be part of the user preferences. So I find myself confused viewing a document created by someone else that has the weekend split between Saturday and Sunday, but if I had my own preferred view it would be confusing discussing the schedule over the phone with someone with another view. I digress, again. Tony H. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
The concept of an internal character set has the crucial weakness---unless full Unicode is used---that it does not address the requirement that substrings from another language having diffferent requirrements must be supported. I received an email in French this morning that contained the English text [The White Knight] . . . was thinking of a plan To dye one’s whiskers green And then to wear so large a fan That they could not be seen. My colleague had just encountered Lewis Carroll in English---Improbably, there are superb, insulating French translations---and he wanted to share his discovery with me. This is a tractable case; but there are also requirements to embed, say, Arabic or Hebrew text, written from right to left, in Danish text, written from left to right. There is probably no escape from the ugly device of shift in ||descriptor ||foreign text ||shift out. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
John [McKown]: I do not think that natural-language text belongs in a program. It should always be externalized in standardized text tables that are the same in form but not in content for different natural languages. This sounds like a PITA, but it does not turn out to be. Some of our Canadian colleagues, whose websites are perforce bilingual, do this very effectively. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I am not sure I understand what handle translations of string data from one language to another means. Something like google translate#? Translations of this sort can be useful, but they are not yet reliable enough to be usable in a notionally deterministic program, and they often do very badly in the presence of semantic ambiguity. Consider The pen, whether in or out of a pen, cannot hold a pen. Semantically clarified this is The female swan, whether in or out of an animal enclosure, cannot hold a writing instrument. This example does in fact contain semantic clues that help with its translation, but neither google translate# nor it competitors do well by it. Fortunately, they do so badly by it that little harm is done. The subtler errors that they make are much more dangerous. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I wasn't wanting to translate words. But when we do a comparison on the z, we basically just do a byte-for-byte compare. That does not always give the proper result. I am not very familar with culturally correct collations. But I do remember (from 10e7 years ago) that in Spanish, the ch is considered a single character which collates after c and before d. So, from one stand point, to do a correct compare would somehow need to say that the string: chorizo is greater than ciudad. But in both CP-1047 and ISO8859-1, this is not true. But I now see from what Mr. Gilmore has been saying that I am perhaps wanting too much from a computer language. I will need to depend on the programmer actually doing the proper things in all of his/her programs. So that when I use chorizo in English it will show up before cider, but if I-the-programmer know that Spanish is the locale, that it is after ciudad. I don't know how this can be done generically. Especially if one throws words in Latin characters into a list with words in Greek characters. On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Gord Tomlin gt.ibm.li...@actionsoftware.com wrote: On 2013-10-28 14:35, John Gilmore wrote: I am not sure I understand what handle translations of string data from one language to another means. Something like google translate#? I was just guessing as to John M's intent, but I wouldn't be surprised if he meant something along the lines of Google Translate. I don't want to put words in his mouth, so I will let him elaborate. Translations of this sort can be useful, but they are not yet reliable enough to be usable in a notionally deterministic program, and they often do very badly in the presence of semantic ambiguity. Agreed. -- -- Regards, Gord Tomlin Action Software International (a division of Mazda Computer Corporation) Tel: (905) 470-7113, Fax: (905) 470-6507 --**--**-- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough hunchbacks. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 2013-10-28 15:08, John McKown wrote: I wasn't wanting to translate words. But when we do a comparison on the z, we basically just do a byte-for-byte compare. That does not always give the proper result. I am not very familar with culturally correct collations. But I do remember (from 10e7 years ago) that in Spanish, the ch is considered a single character which collates after c and before d. So, from one stand point, to do a correct compare would somehow need to say that the string: chorizo is greater than ciudad. But in both CP-1047 and ISO8859-1, this is not true. But I now see from what Mr. Gilmore has been saying that I am perhaps wanting too much from a computer language. I will need to depend on the programmer actually doing the proper things in all of his/her programs. So that when I use chorizo in English it will show up before cider, but if I-the-programmer know that Spanish is the locale, that it is after ciudad. I don't know how this can be done generically. Especially if one throws words in Latin characters into a list with words in Greek characters. Intelligent string collation of the sort you are suggesting is probably something that would find a better home in a run time library or in a utility product, as opposed to being built right into a computer language. In fact, a Google search for locale sensitive string comparison shows that such facilities are available for several languages. -- Regards, Gord Tomlin Action Software International (a division of Mazda Computer Corporation) Tel: (905) 470-7113, Fax: (905) 470-6507 -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 1461078175079083.wa.zatlas1yahoo@listserv.ua.edu, on 10/26/2013 at 09:28 PM, Ze'ev Atlas zatl...@yahoo.com said: The issue is that if you provide a binary for IBM-1047 it surely won't work on a IBM-1026 Turkish or Greek or any other language. Why can't it test for locale? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 27/10/2013 6:50 PM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: In 1461078175079083.wa.zatlas1yahoo@listserv.ua.edu, on 10/26/2013 at 09:28 PM, Ze'ev Atlas zatl...@yahoo.com said: The issue is that if you provide a binary for IBM-1047 it surely won't work on a IBM-1026 Turkish or Greek or any other language. Why can't it test for locale? That's a very good point! Trouble is most software ported from ASCII (Expat XML parser for example) tend to only support a limit set of code pages. It's a lot of work to fix it up to support the complete plethora of EBCDIC and usually not worth it. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
All The www.z390.org website has a portable mainframe assembler and emulator available for download in open source J2SE java and executable z390.jar formats. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Apple OSX. This month I wrote 3 very short structured macro assembler programs to extract data from two reports, sort the data, and then merge the data into a single file for loading into a relational database. This website has SDK zip with the 3 MLC programs and also has PDF showing the 8 reported generated from database in place of the original reports. This is offered just as a current example of useful open source mainframe code: http://www.don-higgins.net/RZDC/Rotary_Zone_District_Country_Downloads.html I started to learn J2SE java when I left Micro Focus in 2004. It is a very powerful language once you get to know the working set of library classes such as BigInteger and BigDecimal which I used to code emulation for all 9 HFP, BFP, and DFP floating point formats. There is an unfinished version of zcobol included along with a lot of working sample COBOL programs. The zcobol compiler which generates MLC source assembler with data labels includes support for all 9 floating point types. One of the big challenges with open source software is the need for ongoing development and support. When I was director of IT for Florida Power for many years, I was perfectly willing to pay IBM, Oracle, and other software vendors for software that may not have been perfect but they did offer continued development improvements and support. Don Higgins d...@higgins.net -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Locale can be set by environment variable. It's not a compile time option. The stock regex engines handle locales on z/OS. On 27 Oct 2013, at 9:00 pm, Ze'ev Atlas zatl...@yahoo.com wrote: Why can't it test for locale? because they do not have C and cannot build it. for me, to change the open source library that was not designed to deal with that stuff (i.e. EBCDIC locales), it would be a major surgery rather then a relatively simple port. PCRE has to be compiled separately for ASCII/UTF-8 vs. UTF-16, vs UTF-32 vs. EBCDIC ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Please note that EBCDIC support is not a technical requirement for applications and tools running on z/OS unless those applications/tools need to operate directly with/on EBCDIC data. (But then that's not unique to z/OS-hosted applications/tools.) I think the better way to describe the situation is that z/OS customers often have a preference, perhaps even a strong one, for applications/tools that support EBCDIC when running on z/OS given that many have EBCDIC data they'd like to operate with/on. But it's certainly not a universal requirement, and there's absolutely no requirement to support EBCDIC in order to get an application/tool running on z/OS. Likewise, there's no *requirement* to support SMP/E installation, generate SMF records, plug into z/OS Resource Recovery Services, be ARM-aware, support any particular z/OS data storage method (such as VSAM), support 31-bit or 24-bit, leverage Coupling Facility structures, provide ISPF panels, etc., etc. Some/all of these features might be nice to have, but they are *not* required to get the application/tool ported and running correctly. It's very important not to overstate the scope. Timothy Sipples GMU VCT Architect Executive (Based in Singapore) E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Bob Wrote: The open source Linux tools generally require porting, which require a mainframe, which most folks don't have at home, so open source isn't significant in the mainframe arena. This is the main issue really, getting a descent and legitimate development environment is tough. And then there is another, related subject, most open source is written in C which is NOT available in many many shops. It is a legitimate, fully developed and wonderful compiler in z/OS but it cost money and many shops just don't spend that money. So even if you go through the trouble of porting the open source into Classic z/OS (PDSE's, JCL, at al) as I did when I ported the PCRE library, it's not good enough because many potential users cannot build it anyway. Providing binaries might have been a solution had we not have to deal with the bizarre EBCDIC issue. The issue is not so much that EBCDIC is different then ASCII, that is relatively easy to handle. The issue is that if you provide a binary for IBM-1047 it surely won't work on a IBM-1026 Turkish or Greek or any other language. Bottom line, the port as well as it done is basically unavailable. I am pretty disappointed because I really wanted to start a trend. ZA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 8755627167295105.wa.ibmmaintpg.com...@listserv.ua.edu, on 10/03/2013 at 07:31 PM, Shane Ginnane ibm-m...@tpg.com.au said: Every employment contract I've seen includes ownership of code developed - and isn't limited to the employment duration. I've redlined such contracts, and management went along with my changes. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 1444041293790651.wa.sachapmanaep@listserv.ua.edu, on 10/04/2013 at 07:40 AM, Scott Chapman sachap...@aep.com said: If you're developing in ISPF on a 24x80 screen It never ceases to amaze me that there are companies using 24x80 decades after it was obsolete. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 4 October 2013 06:03, Brian Westerman brian_wester...@syzygyinc.com wrote: Unfortunately, as many of you have pointed out in this thread, IBM/CA/BMC software is seen as the premium choice for Systems Automation software, even though feature-for-feature, and cost-wise we have them well and truly beaten. Great post Brian. It sounds like image counts for a lot in this world. I thought that if it was easier and cheaper for single developers or small companies to both develop and market their software that you could potentially end up with a flourishing ecosystem of low cost or free software, but maybe I'm just being naive. I wonder what would need to change to make customers more comfortable with that model? E.g. in terms of support from IBM. Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 4/10/2013 5:30 PM, David Griffiths wrote: On 4 October 2013 06:03, Brian Westerman brian_wester...@syzygyinc.com wrote: Unfortunately, as many of you have pointed out in this thread, IBM/CA/BMC software is seen as the premium choice for Systems Automation software, even though feature-for-feature, and cost-wise we have them well and truly beaten. Great post Brian. It sounds like image counts for a lot in this world. I thought that if it was easier and cheaper for single developers or small companies to both develop and market their software that you could potentially end up with a flourishing ecosystem of low cost or free software, but maybe I'm just being naive. I wonder what would need to change to make customers more comfortable with that model? E.g. in terms of support from IBM. IBM published a redbook yonks ago wrt porting open source software to z/OS Unix and released lots of useful tools as a result http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/features/unix/bpxa1ty1.html. Those tools are now stale and in serious need of a refresh. z/OS 2.1 has added C runtime functions for extended streams so porting the current version of autotools will be a lot easier. Once that's done porting up to date open source software becomes a reality. IBM should run another redbook with new, better open source tools and offer some form of support. Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 4/10/2013 4:53 PM, David Griffiths wrote: On 4 October 2013 04:15, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote: I am not one iota interested in compiling in ASCII. I've tried that before and it's full of holes. I always end up having to manually covert code pages to do simple stuff like write log output to sysout from a batch job. I'm new to this list so wasn't aware that you'd done all that work with Lua. Interesting - keep meaning to find the time to have a play with it. By the way when we ported Java to OS390 we took the decision to compile in ascii but that's partly because so much internal JVM code is messing with ascii strings (e.g. from the bytecode). System.out is then a special case because it has to convert to ebcdic. The whole ascii/ebcdic thing is such a pain though when it comes to porting open source stuff :( I stumbled across Lua when I was porting another FOSS product, Redis, the NoSQL database which uses it as an embedded scripting engine. When I took a closer look I realised I had struck gold. It was so fast my colleagues thought I was tricking them and running a compiled language. It's taken me about a year to port a substantial runtime and now I wouldn't even consider C/C++ or Java unless there was a very compelling reason to do so. I can do just about everything Java can do with a fraction of the code and performance is closer than you would think. Lua spends most of it's time in fast C code. In some cases only 10% overhead for the Lua interpreter. If you're interested in my port drop me a line. It's more of a fork really, there was no point trying to convince maintainers to accept MVS patches. Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I agree completely with what John said. The other thing I might add is that it's possible that there are utilities that companies have developed in house that therefore are owned by the corporations that don't want to release the code for free due to concerns about liability and a lack of good business reason to do so. However if there was a business justification for it (by virtue of some sort of payment coming in) coupled with some sort of well-vetted legal framework protecting the providers from liability, may encourage some release of that code. Although whether that would actually happen or not is hard to say, and frankly I'm not overly hopeful. But it would be nice if there was a way to allow for cheap/easy entry into developing/testing software for z/OS that doesn't involve paying IBM thousands of dollars. Re. the issue that there's not a market for software developed by small (micro) companies in the enterprise space, that may be true for the large shops, but I'm guessing that the smaller shops might be more motivated to deal with inexpensive software provided by micro companies. And once such micro companies start generating income, they can grow into something over time that the larger companies will be comfortable with. And there are a few small providers out there providing niche products to z/OS successfully. Scott Chapman On Thu, 3 Oct 2013 07:23:33 -0500, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com wrote: The only problem with the CBTTAPE is that it is really only for _free_ ($0.00 cost), open source type software. I am not really aware of any of the contributions which are binary executables and support files only. I don't know of a way to have something like the Apple, Google, or Amazon app store where you actually pay real money and receive an executable. I am not sure, but it appears that David is looking at something where some of us in the field could write something very useful. And then publish it via the z/OS app store in order to make some money. It would be an interesting way to encourage the individual practitioner to transition into being a small ISV. Of course, one problem with this is where the individual is doing the development? question. If they are doing it on their employer's machine, then the employer likely has some rights to the software. Most of the Apple/Android apps are developed on a person's own PC, and so there is not really any question about who owns it. Since IBM does _not_ supply a free/low cost way to have your own z machine with software, this is not likely to catch on. As much as I like it. Might be interesting if IBM had a z/OS system that they maintained on which an individual could afford to have their own account, like in the old days of time sharing. Of course, IBM (on the z at least) has little or no interest in any product which does not have a high markup. So I doubt this is going to happen. On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 6:59 AM, גדי בן אבי gad...@malam.com wrote: We use a few products that are freeware like XMITIP or the free version of Service Pilot NBA (formerly TDSLINK). There a few others. The CBTTAPE site is a great source for these types of products. I'm not sure we need something else. Gadi -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of David Griffiths Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 2:39 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? 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 lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN לשימת לבך, בהתאם לנהלי החברה וזכויות החתימה בה, כל הצעה, התחייבות או מצג מטעם החברה, מחייבים מסמך נפרד וחתום על ידי מורשי החתימה של החברה, הנושא את לוגו החברה או שמה המודפס ובצירוף חותמת החברה. בהעדר מסמך כאמור (לרבות מסמך סרוק) המצורף להודעת דואר אלקטרוני זאת, אין לראות באמור בהודעה אלא משום טיוטה לדיון, ואין להסתמך עליה לביצוע פעולה עסקית או משפטית כלשהי.
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I don't care for programming in Java myself, although I do from time to time. And I agree that Java is difficult to be productive in if you're not doing it every day just because there's about 6 ways to do everything. I would argue though that productivity is only partially about the language: the equal to larger issue is whether your development tools support your programmers' productivity. If you're developing in ISPF on a 24x80 screen instead of a rich IDE, you're likely going to have a hard time being as productive as somebody who's using a more modern tool. Also, languages that have a version that will run in the JVM will almost certainly run on z/OS. Groovy for example. JavaScript most definitely runs on z/OS inside the JVM. Scott 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. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 10/3/2013 at 04:22 PM, Gord Tomlin gt.ibm.li...@actionsoftware.com wrote: Python is an interesting, and frustrating, case. There have been ports to s390, but the custodians of the Python trunk are unwilling to accept s390 patches into their code base, and are quite hostile to the platform. This situation is regrettable, since there is a wealth of tools built with Python. Gord, When you say they're unwilling to accept s390 patches, do you really mean they're unwilling to accept patches for z/OS or UNIX System Services? Because Python has been running on Linux on S/390 and System z for a very long time now. Mark Post -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On Fri, 4 Oct 2013 10:57:06 -0600, Mark Post wrote: On 10/3/2013 at 04:22 PM, Gord Tomlin wrote: Python is an interesting, and frustrating, case. There have been ports to s390, but the custodians of the Python trunk are unwilling to accept s390 patches into their code base, and are quite hostile to the platform. This situation is regrettable, since there is a wealth of tools built with Python. When you say they're unwilling to accept s390 patches, do you really mean they're unwilling to accept patches for z/OS or UNIX System Services? Because Python has been running on Linux on S/390 and System z for a very long time now. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-bugs-list/2007-October/041552.html -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 4 October 2013 12:57, Mark Post mp...@suse.com wrote: On 10/3/2013 at 04:22 PM, Gord Tomlin gt.ibm.li...@actionsoftware.com wrote: Python is an interesting, and frustrating, case. There have been ports to s390, but the custodians of the Python trunk are unwilling to accept s390 patches into their code base, and are quite hostile to the platform. This situation is regrettable, since there is a wealth of tools built with Python. Gord, When you say they're unwilling to accept s390 patches, do you really mean they're unwilling to accept patches for z/OS or UNIX System Services? Because Python has been running on Linux on S/390 and System z for a very long time now. It's mostly explicit hostility to EBCDIC (the author actually compared the notion of hard-coding ASCII to hard-coding the notion of 8-bit bytes), but there's also extreme skepticism toward the importance of mainframes in the real world. Tony H. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Did they Python 3 released with UTF8? https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-bugs-list/2007-October/041524.html On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com wrote: On Fri, 4 Oct 2013 10:57:06 -0600, Mark Post wrote: On 10/3/2013 at 04:22 PM, Gord Tomlin wrote: Python is an interesting, and frustrating, case. There have been ports to s390, but the custodians of the Python trunk are unwilling to accept s390 patches into their code base, and are quite hostile to the platform. This situation is regrettable, since there is a wealth of tools built with Python. When you say they're unwilling to accept s390 patches, do you really mean they're unwilling to accept patches for z/OS or UNIX System Services? Because Python has been running on Linux on S/390 and System z for a very long time now. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-bugs-list/2007-October/041552.html -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In CAAJSdjh5rouFk8OV=bh9k49amwjz0zz6mh3bz3rw7foxfm9...@mail.gmail.com, on 10/03/2013 at 07:23 AM, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com said: The only problem with the CBTTAPE is that it is really only for _free_ ($0.00 cost), open source type software. Some of the contributions on the CBT tape were binary only. I am not sure, but it appears that David is looking at something where some of us in the field could write something very useful. Part of what he was talking about was ports of open source software, much of which is covered by GPL. Of course, even for those he could charge for support. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 7cd15d2a8f66c24ea70e04bc53ce3917323e2...@phcmpr1h.safeway01.ad.safeway.com, on 10/03/2013 at 04:23 PM, Jerry Whitteridge jerry.whitteri...@safeway.com said: We need to remember that the CBT tape products WERE the first Shareware and used in production in many shops. Every generation believes that it invented sex. People were collecting and distributing free code well before the CBT tape, although we owe Arnie a debt of gratitude for maintaining it for so long. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In 524dc928.2080...@actionsoftware.com, on 10/03/2013 at 03:44 PM, Gord Tomlin gt.ibm.li...@actionsoftware.com said: It is almost a certainty that the employer will retain the rights to the code, and almost as likely that the employer will deny a request to share the code publicly. No; what is a certainty is that there is no one size fits all; each shop has its own policy. IBM has allegedly spent billions on open source software development. The bottom line is to ask your own management what their policy is. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Let's not forget IBM did so as well. CE's (and others) used to carry reel tapes along with them. These tapes carries some nice surprises. They were (I think written by IBMers ) and got wide distribution to customers. There were of course the FDP's IBM even had a manual with those listed. I think they were essentially free or $25 (or there about). If memory serves me the programs were listed in a GC manual (ifffy here it might have been a GY or something close and close to 1/2 inch thick). Ed On Oct 4, 2013, at 4:41 PM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: In 7cd15d2a8f66c24ea70e04bc53ce3917323e2...@phcmpr1h.safeway01.ad.safewa y.com, on 10/03/2013 at 04:23 PM, Jerry Whitteridge jerry.whitteri...@safeway.com said: We need to remember that the CBT tape products WERE the first Shareware and used in production in many shops. Every generation believes that it invented sex. People were collecting and distributing free code well before the CBT tape, although we owe Arnie a debt of gratitude for maintaining it for so long. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
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 lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
We use a few products that are freeware like XMITIP or the free version of Service Pilot NBA (formerly TDSLINK). There a few others. The CBTTAPE site is a great source for these types of products. I'm not sure we need something else. Gadi -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of David Griffiths Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 2:39 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? 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 lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN לשימת לבך, בהתאם לנהלי החברה וזכויות החתימה בה, כל הצעה, התחייבות או מצג מטעם החברה, מחייבים מסמך נפרד וחתום על ידי מורשי החתימה של החברה, הנושא את לוגו החברה או שמה המודפס ובצירוף חותמת החברה. בהעדר מסמך כאמור (לרבות מסמך סרוק) המצורף להודעת דואר אלקטרוני זאת, אין לראות באמור בהודעה אלא משום טיוטה לדיון, ואין להסתמך עליה לביצוע פעולה עסקית או משפטית כלשהי. Please note that in accordance with Malam's signatory rights, no offer, agreement, concession or representation is binding on the company, unless accompanied by a duly signed separate document (or a scanned version thereof), affixed with the company's seal. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
The only problem with the CBTTAPE is that it is really only for _free_ ($0.00 cost), open source type software. I am not really aware of any of the contributions which are binary executables and support files only. I don't know of a way to have something like the Apple, Google, or Amazon app store where you actually pay real money and receive an executable. I am not sure, but it appears that David is looking at something where some of us in the field could write something very useful. And then publish it via the z/OS app store in order to make some money. It would be an interesting way to encourage the individual practitioner to transition into being a small ISV. Of course, one problem with this is where the individual is doing the development? question. If they are doing it on their employer's machine, then the employer likely has some rights to the software. Most of the Apple/Android apps are developed on a person's own PC, and so there is not really any question about who owns it. Since IBM does _not_ supply a free/low cost way to have your own z machine with software, this is not likely to catch on. As much as I like it. Might be interesting if IBM had a z/OS system that they maintained on which an individual could afford to have their own account, like in the old days of time sharing. Of course, IBM (on the z at least) has little or no interest in any product which does not have a high markup. So I doubt this is going to happen. On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 6:59 AM, גדי בן אבי gad...@malam.com wrote: We use a few products that are freeware like XMITIP or the free version of Service Pilot NBA (formerly TDSLINK). There a few others. The CBTTAPE site is a great source for these types of products. I'm not sure we need something else. Gadi -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of David Griffiths Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 2:39 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? 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 lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN לשימת לבך, בהתאם לנהלי החברה וזכויות החתימה בה, כל הצעה, התחייבות או מצג מטעם החברה, מחייבים מסמך נפרד וחתום על ידי מורשי החתימה של החברה, הנושא את לוגו החברה או שמה המודפס ובצירוף חותמת החברה. בהעדר מסמך כאמור (לרבות מסמך סרוק) המצורף להודעת דואר אלקטרוני זאת, אין לראות באמור בהודעה אלא משום טיוטה לדיון, ואין להסתמך עליה לביצוע פעולה עסקית או משפטית כלשהי. Please note that in accordance with Malam's signatory rights, no offer, agreement, concession or representation is binding on the company, unless accompanied by a duly signed separate document (or a scanned version thereof), affixed with the company's seal. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
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 lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Most shops I have worked at do not want to bring in any product that has only a small support group. For example, if a product is developed that has a real benefit - but it is from Sally's Software firm. But Sally is the only person for support and sales, then they will not look at it because they believed it would not last past the time that Sally could no longer support it. I think the question comes down to: Is it cost effective to invest in a function that may have a limited life span. What happens if it becomes imbedded in production and then when it breaks, our production goes down and there is no one on the staff to support it? So some of the larger organizations would not be willing to invest unless they could see the lifecycle of the product and creator (be it business or individual) I have several downloads I use from the CBT Tape. But I do not incorporate them into a production - if this dies the system dies - process. If the tool I have from the CBT TAPE dies, it does not impact anything but my statistics or analysis functions. Then I try to go and find another process. I am always looking for products supported by companies that have a good track record so I can replace anything I use from the CBT TAPE; however, that usage is isolated to me and no one else. One caveat. No business is protected from failure. So even when buying tools from various vendors, there is no guarantee that the vendor will be around tomorrow. Or that support will be able to fix the problem if they cannot replicate it in-house. Lizette -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of John McKown Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 5:24 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? The only problem with the CBTTAPE is that it is really only for _free_ ($0.00 cost), open source type software. I am not really aware of any of the contributions which are binary executables and support files only. I don't know of a way to have something like the Apple, Google, or Amazon app store where you actually pay real money and receive an executable. I am not sure, but it appears that David is looking at something where some of us in the field could write something very useful. And then publish it via the z/OS app store in order to make some money. It would be an interesting way to encourage the individual practitioner to transition into being a small ISV. Of course, one problem with this is where the individual is doing the development? question. If they are doing it on their employer's machine, then the employer likely has some rights to the software. Most of the Apple/Android apps are developed on a person's own PC, and so there is not really any question about who owns it. Since IBM does _not_ supply a free/low cost way to have your own z machine with software, this is not likely to catch on. As much as I like it. Might be interesting if IBM had a z/OS system that they maintained on which an individual could afford to have their own account, like in the old days of time sharing. Of course, IBM (on the z at least) has little or no interest in any product which does not have a high markup. So I doubt this is going to happen. -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of David Griffiths Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 2:39 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? 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! -- I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
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 i...@dovetail.com 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 dcrayf...@gmail.com 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 lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN --**--**-- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 3 October 2013 15:33, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com 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. I wonder what level that support needs to be at for people to purchase and use such apps? Maybe if people could get confidence from seeing other people's feedback on the app store combined with a contact email address, would that be sufficient in some circumstances? 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. Agreed. I know Rexx has a lot of fans for instance but few outside the mainframe world. Would be good to see modern alternatives such as Lua. Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 3 October 2013 13:23, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com wrote: Of course, one problem with this is where the individual is doing the development? question. Yes, that's absolutely key! But solvable I think. Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 3 October 2013 15:59, Lizette Koehler stars...@mindspring.com wrote: I have several downloads I use from the CBT Tape. But I do not incorporate them into a production - if this dies the system dies - process. If the tool I have from the CBT TAPE dies, it does not impact anything but my statistics or analysis functions. Do you think that - along the lines of the CBT Tape - that there is much of a potential market for non-production-critical tools? For instance a company buying a $99 copy of Python for their log processing needs? Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In my experience, eventually almost anything useful becomes production critical. Some programmer will eventually get their hands on it and integrate it directly into a mission critical process. On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 10:15 AM, David Griffiths david.griffi...@gmail.comwrote: On 3 October 2013 15:59, Lizette Koehler stars...@mindspring.com wrote: I have several downloads I use from the CBT Tape. But I do not incorporate them into a production - if this dies the system dies - process. If the tool I have from the CBT TAPE dies, it does not impact anything but my statistics or analysis functions. Do you think that - along the lines of the CBT Tape - that there is much of a potential market for non-production-critical tools? For instance a company buying a $99 copy of Python for their log processing needs? Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 3/10/2013 11:04 PM, David Griffiths wrote: On 3 October 2013 15:33, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com 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. I wonder what level that support needs to be at for people to purchase and use such apps? Maybe if people could get confidence from seeing other people's feedback on the app store combined with a contact email address, would that be sufficient in some circumstances? Anybody can use an open source package for free. If you want support you pay. Simple as that. That's a good deal! 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. Agreed. I know Rexx has a lot of fans for instance but few outside the mainframe world. Would be good to see modern alternatives such as Lua. It's no secret that I ported Lua because I yap on about it enough! But that's not because I'm motived by self-promotion. My point is, hey, here is something really good to do interesting stuff that your current tool set cannot. It's backed by a huge community and people are contributing all the time. It's alive, it's kicking and it can make your life better. To me it's a no-brainer but convincing mainframers to step outside of their comfort zone is difficult. Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Lizette Koehler wrote: I have several downloads I use from the CBT Tape. But I do not incorporate them into a production - if this dies the system dies - process. If the tool I have from the CBT TAPE dies, it does not impact anything but my statistics or analysis functions. Then I try to go and find another process. Indeed. Everything from CBT Tape is *optional*. If I can't assemble it or it does not work, I just drop it. No sweat. Some free IBM goodies are also available for using (with the usual disclaimer and warning about no support). I am always looking for products supported by companies that have a good track record so I can replace anything I use from the CBT TAPE; however, that usage is isolated to me and no one else. Or some of the CBT Tape freebies were incorporate into z/OS at a later stage. Think for example those freebies which allows you to dynamically modify a Linklist. One caveat. No business is protected from failure. So even when buying tools from various vendors, there is no guarantee that the vendor will be around tomorrow. Or that support will be able to fix the problem if they cannot replicate it in-house. For us, we need guarantee the vendor with a good track record or its reseller has an office + staff in our country. One vendor closed their office because of their own reasons and appointed a reseller. We dropped them and got another vendor because the appointed reseller was not reliable/available. Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
From my perspective, the mainframe and the open systems (including Mobile Apps) have different agendas and different concerns. On the mainframe we have many things working concurrently (IMS, DB2, CICS, MQ, etc). It seems in the open systems world the applications are limited to one server (or server farm). I am not aware that multiple functions can co-exist on a server. This is not to say the open systems and mobile apps that do not share these concerns - however The mainframe has massive applications that if they go down the amount of time to recover the application and/or fix it could take many hours/days that costs the business income. Or cause an LPAR wide outage that affects many more working applications (MQ, DB2, IMS, CICS). That is bad for the bottom line. Any freeware, Shareware, etc... brought in to a mainframe environment will eventually become a critical piece of production applications - no matter how much you say THIS IS NOT FOR PRODUCTION Yes, there is a need for tools. However, in the past, system programmers used assembler programs to create those processes and then they mentored juniors to support that code. In today's environment, rarely do shops have assembler programmers, there are not enough young people going into the Mainframe arena, and management is reluctant to provide the training they did in the past to be able to support these tools. On the mainframe we are also very mindful of resource utilization and performance. I cannot place a REXX tool into production because we do not have the REXX Compiler, and REXX is a resource consumer. Therefore the edict is no REXX. I can have REXX for my personal use. But I cannot share the REXX outside of my group. If REXX goes into production - warning lights and bells go off and the REXX Police come out and haul you away. There is also a concern that when you have an operating system or hardware upgrade, the tools will break. I had that happen when IBM moved the UCB Above the line and a 24bit program expected the UCB and not the Address of the UCB. It was something we missed in our analysis because we did not know someone had done that or that it was in production. Fortunately it was localized to a few production batch jobs, but it did take a while to determine why the S0C4 was occurring. I would suspect that once the old guard is gone - the young pups supporting the mainframe will start to do exactly what you are proposing and therefor the mainframe production environment will be more open So, say I bring in Python for $99 to read logs and I can do that because my manager has approval for software purchase under $1000.00 . And it is restricted to my use. But someone sees me use it, asks to have the same thing for their logs, and BOOM, now it is rampant in production and a critical app. And it all started out innocently enough. I believe that mainframers have learned over the decades there is no such thing as a one-time use or limited to just me ported tool. Things have a way of spreading out quickly and invariably winds up in a critical production path. From observation, it seems the open systems and mobile apps have a higher tolerance for ported tools and outages - even though it might impact production, and it does not seem to be as high as a concern. I have seen open system apps down for several days because someone used a ported tool that no one knew was there. We can see what happened when IBMLINK moved from a green screen product to a web based application. And how quickly its priority for uptime has seemed to lapse. Just my two cents worth Lizette -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of David Griffiths Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 8:15 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? On 3 October 2013 15:59, Lizette Koehler stars...@mindspring.com wrote: I have several downloads I use from the CBT Tape. But I do not incorporate them into a production - if this dies the system dies - process. If the tool I have from the CBT TAPE dies, it does not impact anything but my statistics or analysis functions. Do you think that - along the lines of the CBT Tape - that there is much of a potential market for non-production-critical tools? For instance a company buying a $99 copy of Python for their log processing needs? Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 3/10/2013 11:47 PM, Lizette Koehler wrote: The mainframe has massive applications that if they go down the amount of time to recover the application and/or fix it could take many hours/days that costs the business income. Or cause an LPAR wide outage that affects many more working applications (MQ, DB2, IMS, CICS). That is bad for the bottom line. Any freeware, Shareware, etc... brought in to a mainframe environment will eventually become a critical piece of production applications - no matter how much you say THIS IS NOT FOR PRODUCTION But CICS is now touting PHP for CICS applications for mobile devices. That's open source software. To keep up with the Jones the mainframe has to adapt. If a vendor like Rocket offer support for the open source software that's all well and good. But that's still vendor lock in isn't it? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
David said, To me it's a no-brainer but convincing mainframers to step outside of their comfort zone is difficult. I have to disagree, partly, with that. In the course of my career, I have been forced repeatedly to learn spiffy new things. As I started working the mainframe in 1977, it's easy to grasp the magnitude of changes so many of us have successfully learned and integrated into our daily routines. The key here is risk management. Lizette made the point very well the seriousness of a mainframe outage. An outage traced to non-approved software in production is very likely a career ending event for the people involved, and possibly their managers. Then take into account the business impact. It's not that we don't want to play with the shiny new toys. Living in cardboard boxes is just so unappealing. Cheers,,,Steve Steven F. Conway, CISSP LA Systems z/OS Systems Support Phone: 703.295.1926 steve_con...@ao.uscourts.gov -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 3 October 2013 16:47, Lizette Koehler stars...@mindspring.com wrote: So, say I bring in Python for $99 to read logs and I can do that because my manager has approval for software purchase under $1000.00 . And it is restricted to my use. But someone sees me use it, asks to have the same thing for their logs, and BOOM, now it is rampant in production and a critical app. And it all started out innocently enough. I believe that mainframers have learned over the decades there is no such thing as a one-time use or limited to just me ported tool. Things have a way of spreading out quickly and invariably winds up in a critical production path. Interesting, thanks. Apple of course vet all the apps that appear in their store. I don't know how extensive that vetting process is, but I wonder if a similar process would give customers more confidence? (But stopping short of a we guarantee this app will work thing!) Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 3/10/2013 11:59 PM, Steve Conway wrote: David said, To me it's a no-brainer but convincing mainframers to step outside of their comfort zone is difficult. I have to disagree, partly, with that. In the course of my career, I have been forced repeatedly to learn spiffy new things. As I started working the mainframe in 1977, it's easy to grasp the magnitude of changes so many of us have successfully learned and integrated into our daily routines. The key here is risk management. Lizette made the point very well the seriousness of a mainframe outage. An outage traced to non-approved software in production is very likely a career ending event for the people involved, and possibly their managers. Then take into account the business impact. It's not that we don't want to play with the shiny new toys. Living in cardboard boxes is just so unappealing. I would be far more comfortable having the source code for a tool that I was using as opposed to OCO. Take Lua for example, it runs on over 1billion devices - phones, TVs, washing machines. The release I'm using has been stable since 2006. It's not a toy, it runs applications that we use in our everyday lives without any dramas. Cheers,,,Steve Steven F. Conway, CISSP LA Systems z/OS Systems Support Phone: 703.295.1926 steve_con...@ao.uscourts.gov -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I think that guarantees are less important than would be an established process for fixing, promptly, something that proves to be broken. There are a very few people whose I guarantee this app will work I would give great weight to, without perhaps believing it quite literally. There are no organizations in this category. An organizational commitment to fix what is broken may, however, be believable. That said, I suspect that such a scheme would not be economically viable for cheap apps. What may be possible is a two-level release scheme. An app could perhaps be released first as a draft, 'for testing' one and only later and conditionally upon the community's experience with it as a definitive, 'for use' one. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
ZIP is a poignant case. There exists a version of Info-ZIP for z. However, our copy circa 2000 identifies the maintainer as one Onno van der Linden. The Info-ZIP web site lists him as a ghost: once involved with the project but without current contact data. So what shop would want to become dependent on a now-13 year old product with, as they say, no visible means of support? In another case, our shop has standardized on SFTP for secure transfers. A few years ago we found an open-source version that worked and appeared to have current support. But the Apps folks would not hear of it. They insisted that we buy an ISV version. Don't know the details (and would not reveal anyway), but we found the commercial version pretty sucky. We had to debug it and induce the vendor to make changes. They obviously had--at that time--little serious mainframe experience or the means to test their product thoroughly. I'm not sure what moral these cases embody, but they illustrate the difficulty of taking a real business in an off-the-grid direction. . . JO.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 626-302-7535 Office 323-715-0595 Mobile jo.skip.robin...@sce.com From: Richard Pinion rpin...@netscape.com To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU, Date: 10/03/2013 08:35 AM Subject:Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU I would like to see a free/near free zip program for traditional z/OS data sets. The zip/unzip would do consistency checking, unlike TRSMAIN UNTERSE which will happily unterse a truncated file and give a RC=0. --- david.griffi...@gmail.com wrote: From: David Griffiths david.griffi...@gmail.com To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2013 16:15:27 +0100 On 3 October 2013 15:59, Lizette Koehler stars...@mindspring.com wrote: I have several downloads I use from the CBT Tape. But I do not incorporate them into a production - if this dies the system dies - process. If the tool I have from the CBT TAPE dies, it does not impact anything but my statistics or analysis functions. Do you think that - along the lines of the CBT Tape - that there is much of a potential market for non-production-critical tools? For instance a company buying a $99 copy of Python for their log processing needs? Cheers, Dave -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
We need to remember that the CBT tape products WERE the first Shareware and used in production in many shops. Then the bean counters started worrying about support and got us used to support from Vendors rather than reading the dumps ourselves and fixing the code we had (OCO any one ?). However after the acceptance of Linux in the shop I got much more traction on using things from the CBT tape with management as they again got used to the concept of community support software. I think that the risk just needs to be communicated and analyzed correctly. I'd love to see more current tooling ported to z/OS - but admit getting the company to pay for it would be problematical. Jerry Whitteridge Lead Systems Programmer Safeway Inc. 925 951 4184 If you feel in control you just aren't going fast enough. -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Lizette Koehler Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 8:47 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? From my perspective, the mainframe and the open systems (including Mobile Apps) have different agendas and different concerns. On the mainframe we have many things working concurrently (IMS, DB2, CICS, MQ, etc). It seems in the open systems world the applications are limited to one server (or server farm). I am not aware that multiple functions can co-exist on a server. This is not to say the open systems and mobile apps that do not share these concerns - however The mainframe has massive applications that if they go down the amount of time to recover the application and/or fix it could take many hours/days that costs the business income. Or cause an LPAR wide outage that affects many more working applications (MQ, DB2, IMS, CICS). That is bad for the bottom line. Any freeware, Shareware, etc... brought in to a mainframe environment will eventually become a critical piece of production applications - no matter how much you say THIS IS NOT FOR PRODUCTION I would suspect that once the old guard is gone - the young pups supporting the mainframe will start to do exactly what you are proposing and therefor the mainframe production environment will be more open From observation, it seems the open systems and mobile apps have a higher tolerance for ported tools and outages - even though it might impact production, and it does not seem to be as high as a concern. I have seen open system apps down for several days because someone used a ported tool that no one knew was there. We can see what happened when IBMLINK moved from a green screen product to a web based application. And how quickly its priority for uptime has seemed to lapse. Email Firewall made the following annotations. -- Warning: All e-mail sent to this address will be received by the corporate e-mail system, and is subject to archival and review by someone other than the recipient. This e-mail may contain proprietary information and is intended only for the use of the intended recipient(s). If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient(s), you are notified that you have received this message in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately. == -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 4/10/2013 12:15 AM, John Gilmore wrote: I think that guarantees are less important than would be an established process for fixing, promptly, something that proves to be broken. There are a very few people whose I guarantee this app will work I would give great weight to, without perhaps believing it quite literally. There are no organizations in this category. An organizational commitment to fix what is broken may, however, be believable. That said, I suspect that such a scheme would not be economically viable for cheap apps. What may be possible is a two-level release scheme. An app could perhaps be released first as a draft, 'for testing' one and only later and conditionally upon the community's experience with it as a definitive, 'for use' one. In the end of the day it does come down to trust. Why trust a vendor of a mainframe tool and not an open source product when the open source product may have been scrutinised by thousands of well credentialed experts. Didn't products like CICS, VTAM get a massive contribution from customers back in the day before OCO. Open source software runs our daily lives. From our browsers, our phones, modems/routers, the servers running this list. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
In the end of the day it does come down to trust. Why trust a vendor of a mainframe tool and not an open source product when the open source product may have been scrutinised by thousands of well credentialed experts. Didn't products like CICS, VTAM get a massive contribution from customers back in the day before OCO. Open source software runs our daily lives. From our browsers, our phones, modems/routers, the servers running this list. Great. The OCO holy war that was lost a quarter of a century ago. Some of your points are valid. Customers did contribute significantly towards the development of IBM software before it became OCO. In the mainframe arena there isn't a great deal of open source software available (except for the venerable CBT Tape). The open source Linux tools generally require porting, which require a mainframe, which most folks don't have at home, so open source isn't significant in the mainframe arena. On a non-mainframe system, if you want to run open source software, have at it. (I use Mozilla among other things). My son in law is a big open source proponent too, but when I asked him why he preferred his Mac (another holy war) instead of Linux he couldn't answer. Bob Shannon Rocket Software -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I think you have to see how many mainframe CICS environments have adopted the WEBifying processes in CICS, let along PHP for CICS. I am a strong proponent for putting web services in Mainframe applications. However, I would like to see more vetting of the ported tools to ensure a non-disruptive environment. Can a DoS attach occur? Can the mainframe stop it? How to I restrict services when needed? It is also true that we have z/OS USS processes in the z/OS environment. We can run many ported tools. But again, look at how many shops have adopted it. Vendors like CA have incorporated JBOS into their MSM product for mainframe maintenance for CA software products. They originally used TOMCAT but now I think it is JBOS. We also have HTTP functions and well as others. We only install what has been vetted. Other products, we take a wait and see attitude. They are still in the minority. And unlike an open systems environment, we cannot buy a mainframe computer or carve out a new LPAR to just RUN a CICS environment that supports web and mobile applications. That is fiscally prohibitive. Though I am sure some shops that are HUGE, might have the dollars to do that. However small and medium shop have to be much more conservative. And I think that is the biggest difference between open systems and mainframe. We can multi-task huge applications and data on one LPAR or SYSPLEX. Whereas I believe in open systems, they just keep adding servers or VM Ware to handle the workload. Now, it is not for the lack of trying by some of us grey-beards. But the consideration for SLAs, outage impacts, up time, resource utilization, and performance aspects, must give us pause. I am now and always will be more concerned about system impacts than I will with how much a ported tool could make my life easier. Whenever I develop in-house an ISPF application for restricted usage, I get a ton of emails when it does not work. So I have seen the pain of a limited usage process and not production. The last aspect I have not discussed is Change Control. The mainframe cannot always just add tools in, without a change control approval. That is why if it is under my TSO ID, I am good. If it is shared, there is change control. We really do need to know what is in use and where. Even my production batch JCL has to go through Change Control and a Change Management Software (like Changeman or Endevor). If I want to bring in something for a Proof of Concept, I have to go through Hoops. Again, my two cents worth Lizette -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of David Crayford Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 8:59 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? On 3/10/2013 11:47 PM, Lizette Koehler wrote: The mainframe has massive applications that if they go down the amount of time to recover the application and/or fix it could take many hours/days that costs the business income. Or cause an LPAR wide outage that affects many more working applications (MQ, DB2, IMS, CICS). That is bad for the bottom line. Any freeware, Shareware, etc... brought in to a mainframe environment will eventually become a critical piece of production applications - no matter how much you say THIS IS NOT FOR PRODUCTION But CICS is now touting PHP for CICS applications for mobile devices. That's open source software. To keep up with the Jones the mainframe has to adapt. If a vendor like Rocket offer support for the open source software that's all well and good. But that's still vendor lock in isn't it? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
John, We had a standard that nothing went into production that couldn't be completely supported by the programmer. Having said that we did have IBM utilities in production and of course some vendor utilities in production. How we handled it if it was a IBM utility I (or someone in the systems group) would help debugging it. BUT in 30 years I never had an issue with any IBM utility (we had one or two nasty syncsort bugs but that is slightly different, IMO). The vendor utilities were only allowed if it were say DB type utility and the DB people would help the the people out. We would not allow CBT tape programs anywhere near production. We once had a professional give out this one utility and it was used in testing. It broke and I was called and saw what it was I called the VP and it was never heard or seen after that. Any program that made it into production was OWNED by the person whose name was on it. He/she had to be able to debug it on their own. Ed On Oct 3, 2013, at 10:34 AM, John McKown wrote: In my experience, eventually almost anything useful becomes production critical. Some programmer will eventually get their hands on it and integrate it directly into a mission critical process. On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 10:15 AM, David Griffiths david.griffi...@gmail.comwrote: On 3 October 2013 15:59, Lizette Koehler stars...@mindspring.com wrote: I have several downloads I use from the CBT Tape. But I do not incorporate them into a production - if this dies the system dies - process. If the tool I have from the CBT TAPE dies, it does not impact anything but my statistics or analysis functions. Do you think that - along the lines of the CBT Tape - that there is much of a potential market for non-production-critical tools? For instance a company buying a $99 copy of Python for their log processing needs? Cheers, Dave - - For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM- MAIN -- I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 10/3/2013 12:23 PM, Jerry Whitteridge wrote: We need to remember that the CBT tape products WERE the first Shareware and used in production in many shops. Then the bean counters started worrying about support and got us used to support from Vendors rather than reading the dumps ourselves and fixing the code we had (OCO any one ?). Arnie Casinghino's CBT was not the first shareware. The U.S. government made free software(1) available for the 7xx/79xx mainframes long before the S/360 was designed; additionally programs for the 1401 and 1410 were floating around. Even limiting the discussion to the 360s, IBM had a distribution system for type III (IBM employee contributed software) and type IV (non-IBM contributions). (1) I still have the manual for BOUMAC, a package for vector and matrix calculation, from the Boulder, CO office of the National Bureau of Standards (the N.I.S.T. precursor). Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, Vermont -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
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On 2013-10-03 08:23, John McKown wrote: Of course, one problem with this is where the individual is doing the development? question. If they are doing it on their employer's machine, then the employer likely has some rights to the software. Most of the Apple/Android apps are developed on a person's own PC, and so there is not really any question about who owns it. It is almost a certainty that the employer will retain the rights to the code, and almost as likely that the employer will deny a request to share the code publicly. Since IBM does_not_ supply a free/low cost way to have your own z machine with software, this is not likely to catch on. As much as I like it. Might be interesting if IBM had a z/OS system that they maintained on which an individual could afford to have their own account, like in the old days of time sharing. Of course, IBM (on the z at least) has little or no interest in any product which does not have a high markup. So I doubt this is going to happen. IBM does not provide a z/OS platform that is cost-appropriate for an individual independent developer who is not a Powerball winner. However, they do offer a remote development facility at Dallas. This facility provides you with a guest z/OS running under z/VM for USD $550 per month. It would be up to the individual developer to determine whether that price is feasible in the context of the revenues he/she derives from the product(s) he/she produces. One big difficulty for this business model is the small number of potential customers. The Apple and Google app marketplaces each have hundreds of millions of potential customers. Someone producing a z/OS app has perhaps a few thousand at most. Nobody is about to get rich selling z/OS apps for $100 a pop. -- Regards, Gord Tomlin Action Software International (a division of Mazda Computer Corporation) Tel: (905) 470-7113, Fax: (905) 470-6507 -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013 14:57:08 -0400, Gerhard Postpischil wrote: (1) I still have the manual for BOUMAC, a package for vector and matrix calculation, from the Boulder, CO office of the National Bureau of Standards (the N.I.S.T. precursor). ... which had been called DEVMAC, internally, incorporating an abbreviation of the author's name. -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
Skip, RE: SFTP - I would encourage you to try Co:Z SFTP. (Not unrelated to this thread:) The same product is available both under a free license and also under a commercial license with warranties, support SLAs, etc. FWIW, this has been a very successful business model for us, with many large customers world-wide. See: http://dovetail.com/products/sftp.html http://dovetail.com/support.html Kirk Wolf Dovetailed Technologies http://dovetail.com On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Skip Robinson jo.skip.robin...@sce.comwrote: snip In another case, our shop has standardized on SFTP for secure transfers. A few years ago we found an open-source version that worked and appeared to have current support. But the Apps folks would not hear of it. They insisted that we buy an ISV version. Don't know the details (and would not reveal anyway), but we found the commercial version pretty sucky. We had to debug it and induce the vendor to make changes. They obviously had--at that time--little serious mainframe experience or the means to test their product thoroughly. I'm not sure what moral these cases embody, but they illustrate the difficulty of taking a real business in an off-the-grid direction. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
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On 2013-10-03 11:15, David Griffiths wrote: Do you think that - along the lines of the CBT Tape - that there is much of a potential market for non-production-critical tools? For instance a company buying a $99 copy of Python for their log processing needs? Python is an interesting, and frustrating, case. There have been ports to s390, but the custodians of the Python trunk are unwilling to accept s390 patches into their code base, and are quite hostile to the platform. This situation is regrettable, since there is a wealth of tools built with Python. -- Regards, Gord Tomlin Action Software International (a division of Mazda Computer Corporation) Tel: (905) 470-7113, Fax: (905) 470-6507 -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013 16:22:23 -0400, Gord Tomlin wrote: Python is an interesting, and frustrating, case. There have been ports to s390, but the custodians of the Python trunk are unwilling to accept I think you use the plural by your judgment. s390 patches into their code base, and are quite hostile to the platform. This situation is regrettable, since there is a wealth of tools built with Python. As an alternative, might the mainstream Python be built in Enhanced ASCII mode? Some stumbling blocks: o No ASCII Curses library ( an optional feature of Python). But that might likewise be built from FOSS. o No ASCII X11 library. Don't know whether Python expects this. Again, available as FOSS. o Access to legacy data sets. How does autoconversion interact with legacy data sets? But who needs them? -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
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On 2013-10-03 17:37, Paul Gilmartin wrote: Python is an interesting, and frustrating, case. There have been ports to s390, but the custodians of the Python trunk are unwilling to accept I think you use the plural by your judgment. Good point! And I will revise custodians (plural) to gatekeeper (singular). -- Regards, Gord Tomlin Action Software International (a division of Mazda Computer Corporation) Tel: (905) 470-7113, Fax: (905) 470-6507 -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
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Good thread. I like Kirks ideas, but I can't see it flying. IIRC even Dave has alluded to employer resistance to releasing his efforts on the Lua port. Every employment contract I've seen includes ownership of code developed - and isn't limited to the employment duration. There have even been suggestions that this may include ideas conceived as a result of (paid) work, even if not coded/developed there/then. Shane ... -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
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On 4/10/2013 8:31 AM, Shane Ginnane wrote: Good thread. I like Kirks ideas, but I can't see it flying. IIRC even Dave has alluded to employer resistance to releasing his efforts on the Lua port. The issue wrt me releasing Lua is because of our contract with IBM. I work for a vendor who develops software that's badged and marketed by IBM. The deal we signed for our machine had a clause that states that we can only use it to develop software for IBM products. There are options, such as a zPDT laptop or Dallas. I've had discussions with the management team about it and they're a good bunch of guys. I'm sure something will happen sooner rather than later. I don't port software for the fun of it. I do it because it's going to be useful. The other day my colleague was trying to write a web application for a test case in Java, deploying to Websphere. It took him almost a week, trying to understand the frameworks. It wasn't easy to the neophyte with the EAR and WAR and all that stuff. I could have knocked that up in a couple of hours in Lua in 200 lines of code. That's a real life use case. It's not going into one of our products but it saves time and money. Every employment contract I've seen includes ownership of code developed - and isn't limited to the employment duration. There have even been suggestions that this may include ideas conceived as a result of (paid) work, even if not coded/developed there/then. Shane ... -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
BTW, I have successfully compiled and tested the basic lua 5.2.2 which I downloaded from http://lua.org/download.html . It was basically just download, unwind the tar using pax and converting from ISO8859-1 to IBM-1047, then doing a make posix. But I don't know what else I should really look at trying to port. Or exactly how to do it. On Linux, I use git as an SCM. But I don't having anything like that for z/OS on the system that I'm using (not my employer's). I don't know lua and don't have any test suite, unfortunately. And I've just not been with it so far this week as far as just messing around with it myself. I don't know how much use having the basic lua would be. I could probably package it up for the CBTTape and give it to Mr. Golob to put on the CBTTape web site. On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 8:27 PM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote: On 4/10/2013 8:31 AM, Shane Ginnane wrote: Good thread. I like Kirks ideas, but I can't see it flying. IIRC even Dave has alluded to employer resistance to releasing his efforts on the Lua port. The issue wrt me releasing Lua is because of our contract with IBM. I work for a vendor who develops software that's badged and marketed by IBM. The deal we signed for our machine had a clause that states that we can only use it to develop software for IBM products. There are options, such as a zPDT laptop or Dallas. I've had discussions with the management team about it and they're a good bunch of guys. I'm sure something will happen sooner rather than later. I don't port software for the fun of it. I do it because it's going to be useful. The other day my colleague was trying to write a web application for a test case in Java, deploying to Websphere. It took him almost a week, trying to understand the frameworks. It wasn't easy to the neophyte with the EAR and WAR and all that stuff. I could have knocked that up in a couple of hours in Lua in 200 lines of code. That's a real life use case. It's not going into one of our products but it saves time and money. Every employment contract I've seen includes ownership of code developed - and isn't limited to the employment duration. There have even been suggestions that this may include ideas conceived as a result of (paid) work, even if not coded/developed there/then. Shane ... --**--** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN --**--**-- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 4/10/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote: BTW, I have successfully compiled and tested the basic lua 5.2.2 which I downloaded from http://lua.org/download.html . It was basically just download, unwind the tar using pax and converting from ISO8859-1 to IBM-1047, then doing a make posix. But I don't know what else I should really look at trying to port. Or exactly how to do it. On Linux, I use git as an SCM. But I don't having anything like that for z/OS on the system that I'm using (not my employer's). Most Lua libraries are compatible with Lua 5.1.5. I've stuck with that. I ported luarocks which is a package installer similar to apt-get. I find these days I mostly use github which is the center of the universe for open source. I just scripted curl commands to download tarballs and the pax them. There is secret sauce to the build wrt co-routines and exception handling. If you optimize your code it will abend. I've given the secret away in another thread. Lua is a very small language (200k) and comes with a minimal runtime. That' is by design so it can run on micro-controllers etc. Very different to Python which is big and heavy. Lua blows Python away for speed and has equivalent libraries (list comprehension etc). I am not one iota interested in compiling in ASCII. I've tried that before and it's full of holes. I always end up having to manually covert code pages to do simple stuff like write log output to sysout from a batch job. You need to sort out the Lua string library patterns for EBCDIC. XML uses expat so you need to EBCDIC patch that. Lots of EBCDIC patching. Porting and building a useful runtime library is where the work is. That's where I've spent all my time. For example, to run the web-server stuff in kepler you need to convert to/from ASCII/EBCDIC at the socket level. Same for the SSL socket stuff. z/OS Unix has some peculiar differences to other Unix systems. As the majority of packages are built for Linux you will need to fix a lot of the C code to compile it. Then you need to write z/OS specific libraries for TSO/ISPF so it can be a drop in replacement for REXX. A Locale library to convert code pages. Patch the I/O library to support VSAM. You need to be a pretty sharp C programmer to do all that. I don't know lua and don't have any test suite, unfortunately. And I've just not been with it so far this week as far as just messing around with it myself. I don't know how much use having the basic lua would be. I could probably package it up for the CBTTape and give it to Mr. Golob to put on the CBTTape web site. CBTTape is fine but I would prefer to put my stuff on github. It's got great tooling. On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 8:27 PM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote: On 4/10/2013 8:31 AM, Shane Ginnane wrote: Good thread. I like Kirks ideas, but I can't see it flying. IIRC even Dave has alluded to employer resistance to releasing his efforts on the Lua port. The issue wrt me releasing Lua is because of our contract with IBM. I work for a vendor who develops software that's badged and marketed by IBM. The deal we signed for our machine had a clause that states that we can only use it to develop software for IBM products. There are options, such as a zPDT laptop or Dallas. I've had discussions with the management team about it and they're a good bunch of guys. I'm sure something will happen sooner rather than later. I don't port software for the fun of it. I do it because it's going to be useful. The other day my colleague was trying to write a web application for a test case in Java, deploying to Websphere. It took him almost a week, trying to understand the frameworks. It wasn't easy to the neophyte with the EAR and WAR and all that stuff. I could have knocked that up in a couple of hours in Lua in 200 lines of code. That's a real life use case. It's not going into one of our products but it saves time and money. Every employment contract I've seen includes ownership of code developed - and isn't limited to the employment duration. There have even been suggestions that this may include ideas conceived as a result of (paid) work, even if not coded/developed there/then. Shane ... --**--** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN --**--**-- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
OT in a mainframe forum, but why the desperate need to reduce software costs for z/enterprise platforms? Surely management could make more savings by using open source software on end-user platforms rather than Windoze rubbish (e.g. OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office, which, as usual, needs to change look/feel every release, and force everyone from technical support on down to users to re-train and re-certify). Don't bother to reply. I know the answer. Gutless mangers/auditors that feel safe with a support contract (more money wasted). Oops. Ant. -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of John McKown Sent: Friday, 4 October 2013 12:00 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities? BTW, I have successfully compiled and tested the basic lua 5.2.2 which I downloaded from http://lua.org/download.html . It was basically just download, unwind the tar using pax and converting from ISO8859-1 to IBM-1047, then doing a make posix. But I don't know what else I should really look at trying to port. Or exactly how to do it. On Linux, I use git as an SCM. But I don't having anything like that for z/OS on the system that I'm using (not my employer's). I don't know lua and don't have any test suite, unfortunately. And I've just not been with it so far this week as far as just messing around with it myself. I don't know how much use having the basic lua would be. I could probably package it up for the CBTTape and give it to Mr. Golob to put on the CBTTape web site. On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 8:27 PM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote: On 4/10/2013 8:31 AM, Shane Ginnane wrote: Good thread. I like Kirks ideas, but I can't see it flying. IIRC even Dave has alluded to employer resistance to releasing his efforts on the Lua port. The issue wrt me releasing Lua is because of our contract with IBM. I work for a vendor who develops software that's badged and marketed by IBM. The deal we signed for our machine had a clause that states that we can only use it to develop software for IBM products. There are options, such as a zPDT laptop or Dallas. I've had discussions with the management team about it and they're a good bunch of guys. I'm sure something will happen sooner rather than later. I don't port software for the fun of it. I do it because it's going to be useful. The other day my colleague was trying to write a web application for a test case in Java, deploying to Websphere. It took him almost a week, trying to understand the frameworks. It wasn't easy to the neophyte with the EAR and WAR and all that stuff. I could have knocked that up in a couple of hours in Lua in 200 lines of code. That's a real life use case. It's not going into one of our products but it saves time and money. Every employment contract I've seen includes ownership of code developed - and isn't limited to the employment duration. There have even been suggestions that this may include ideas conceived as a result of (paid) work, even if not coded/developed there/then. Shane ... --**--** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN --**--**-- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- I have _not_ lost my mind! It is backed up on a flash drive somewhere. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
I have a slightly different view of this and have lived in both camps, (a vendor and a client site), so I can offer a slightly odd perspective. A few years back, 12 of us systems programmers got together and decided that we would write the ultimate software tools, and they were (and are) VERY good, but almost no one was buying them. We didn't have any marketing experience, after all we were just a dozen systems programmers, not marketing people, and it showed. One day, I had a conversation with Bruce Black (R.I.P.) from Innovation and he told me how impressed he was with three of our (at the time 4) products, and he had some suggestions for making them even better. He also has one piece of marketing wisdom to offer. He said that what was holding us back is the fact that no matter how good our software, we were reluctant to compete with the established players, and it came off looking like we were selling the software from the back of a turnip truck. He suggested we go out and take an aggressive look at the competition (IBM, CA, BMC, etc.) and compare our products to theirs, and anywhere they had an advantage, we needed to find a way to have our software do it better. We did that, and it still didn't help sales because (as he told me a little later), we still looked like we were selling off the back of that same turnip truck. He told me to create a chart of our product compared to all of the competitors in a head-to-head feature comparison, and I did it, and we were far better than any of them (IBM/CA/ et. al.), but the only row that he said mattered in the end was the one I had last (which he suggested I move to first), it showed the cost of the products and ours was less than 5% of ANY of the other 5 columns. We then bought one ad in one industry magazine and ran it for 1 issue, and we went from 22 sites to over 500 sites in under 60 days. I will always be thankful of Bruce's help, and I remember before he died, he sent me a note to tell me that I need to remember always that it didn't really matter how much BETTER our software was than any of the other products, because we only had to be competitive with features, but the thing that really set us apart was that we could do it better, keep the cost low and keep the customers happy. At the end of his email he wanted to tell me that the low cost thing was a two edged deal, you will get customers and they will be happy to save money, but they will never treat you like they do the big guys because they will always be reminded that they chose us on price, not quality, even though our quality was much higher. So, that was my lesson from Bruce on the image that a software company has to deal with. You can roll the dice and price your product competitively with the existing high priced ones, and sell a few copies, or you can price it fairly, and try to help more sites save money, and you have to decide whether you can live with the lesser image (and less money). After all, We have to sell 20+ copies of our software for each one of IBM's, just to get the same revenue. Bruce had pointed out to me that the biggest difference we can provide for our clients is not something tangible that we can market, but our clients will know of it from dealing with us because we do it (create and support the software) because we want to help, and IBM/CA/BMC can't ever compete with us on that level. Unfortunately, as many of you have pointed out in this thread, IBM/CA/BMC software is seen as the premium choice for Systems Automation software, even though feature-for-feature, and cost-wise we have them well and truly beaten. In some ways, the bad economy has helped us grow to have so many sites, but we still have not raised our prices since we first introduced any of the products. We have never once lost a client to ANY other vendor and more than 99% of our clients have purchased our software AFTER they ran one of the premium products. So, I have to agree that it is difficult to get a site to even try a cheaper or even a free product, because of the potential for disaster, but in most cases, the results are well worth taking the chance. Brian Westerman Syzygy Inc. (www.SyzygyInc.com) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Interested in up to date open source software or low cost utilities?
On 4/10/2013 1:03 PM, Brian Westerman wrote: Unfortunately, as many of you have pointed out in this thread, IBM/CA/BMC software is seen as the premium choice for Systems Automation software, even though feature-for-feature, and cost-wise we have them well and truly beaten. In some ways, the bad economy has helped us grow to have so many sites, but we still have not raised our prices since we first introduced any of the products. We have never once lost a client to ANY other vendor and more than 99% of our clients have purchased our software AFTER they ran one of the premium products. So, I have to agree that it is difficult to get a site to even try a cheaper or even a free product, because of the potential for disaster, but in most cases, the results are well worth taking the chance. I worked for a big supermarket company who replaced Omegamon with TMon because TMon was 50% cheaper and didn't hog 20% of the CPU. Price does matter as does performance. Some CIOs are ruthless when it comes to negotiating with vendors. I once worked for a company who replaced every single CA product because they suddenly increased their prices by 25%. Some of those tools were best of breed but he didn't care. He just wanted rid of CA and that was that. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
