RE: LINUX is the "one" ? .... Comments???

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The business case is reasonably clear: it costs real money for IBM to
support/maintain/enhance the myriad permutations of software across multiple
hardware/software platforms.  Anything they can do to reduce those costs
will directly increase their profits.  Which, oddly enough, they exist to
do.

So instead of maintaining Xedit for MVS, SEU for OS400, Code for Windows,
VAJava's IDE and who knows how many more editors, they get to maintain
Eclipse plugins.  One set of them, in Java, which run on all those
software/hardware platforms without change.  

I think it's burying my head in the sand to disregard the impact their
decision will have on my career (such as it is.)  We've already got used to
"iSeries" being divorced from the marvellous CISC architecture it was born
as.  So iSeries doesn't mean hardware.  What does it mean?  If IBM created
an OS/400 shell to run atop Linux, would we still care?  Hint: We still have
S/38 mode for old code and call the new stuff "native."

Will Linux be the ONLY OS in two years?  Probably not.  Will it be an IBM
push in 2 years?  It might be if they can create an emulation environment
that will run under Linux.  zOS will be the hard one to move because of all
the custom assembler stuff, but OS400 is more or less technology
independent...

I am neither surprised nor frightened by the prospect of another round of
changes to what we old-timers prosaically call Data Processing.
  --buck