RE: Some fodder for marketing, perhaps

[qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   1. RE: Some fodder for marketing, perhaps (Jon Paris)
>
> >> hopefully in V5R4 the single threaded restriction on jobs in qinter will
>be lifted.
>
>Steve - your record is broken! <grin>
>
>Expect to see RPG be fully thread safe in a future release (_not_ V5R4) but
>I don't see QINTER changing.  Why on earth would IBM do it (apart from
>keeping you happy).  It makes absolutely no sense to improve function in the
>dumb terminal area.  They are investing heavily in getting everybody OFF
>dumb terminals - QINTER isn't used for anything but dumb terminals - so why
>would they spend a cent on it?  It's a bit like saying that MS should invest
>millions in creating a new teletype interface to windows!


(Catching some posts from the long weekend...)

Perhaps they'd spend a cent on it because they're collecting a big bunch of 
bucks from those who use it?

Overall, I've somewhat agreed with IBM's "interactive tax" strategy. They 
managed to morph the old SNA/twinax structure into telnet support and that now 
is almost indistinguishable from the old for most practical purposes. Device 
description objects, authorities, message queues, etc., all work w/telnet. The 
TN5250 RFC, and then TN5250E, were of course almost totally IBM's doing. 
There's actually been quite a bit of work put into 5250 support since the 
TCP/IP takeover and essentially all of it has been paid for by the "interactive 
tax".

Perhaps the work is mostly invisible, but it's clear that a _lot_ of work was 
done by IBM in the interactive area since V3R0M5. Not so much in the visible 
aspects, but the underlying "plumbing" has been reworked extensively.

But now what?

If you use iSeries as a server, you don't have to pay for 5250. No reason to 
and you don't care about enhancements for it. But you know, it's possible that 
_all_ enhancements over the past decade are now paid for by those who used 
5250. ('Possible', but I really have no idea.)

But the charge is still in place, isn't it? Is it now relegated to pure profit? 
or is it subsidizing other development work? Will the 5250 users of next year 
be spending more than their share of future development costs for enhancements 
they don't care about?

I don't know. If there will be no significant future development around QINTER, 
why should there be extra charges to use it anymore? If it's effectively 
frozen, perhaps future development fees should be collected from some other 
part of licensing -- the "HTTP" or "sockets" tax! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Tom Liotta