Re: Open Source RPG ?

[David Gibbs <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Neil Palmer wrote:
> 1) Would you be in favor of IBM Open Sourcing RPG ?
>     (give reasons why or why not if you want)

To gain what?

It's not like RPG is a popular language in the open source community ...
and what would the advantage be?  Rapid adaptation to modern
technologies?  One of the strengths of RPG (indeed the iSeries, or
whatever it's called today, itself) is stability.  To make the RPG
compiler open source invites customizations ... what happens when a
vendor takes the RPG compiler and customizes it to their own end ...
nobody else would be able to use programs based on that customization
without having the modified compiler source.  This makes things less
stable.  Plus, modifications to the compiler would probably not go
through the same rigorous QA that IBM does.

JMHO, of course.

david