Re: Open Source RPG ?

["Steve Richter" <stephenrichter@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/12/06, David Gibbs <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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?

survival.

>
> 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.

wait a minute. I thought QA was a selling point for open source.  
This system of ours is fading into oblivion. The only ways to save it
are massive R&D by IBM or open sourcing the entire OS.  Either way it
should run on the p5 and be priced at AIX and Linux levels.  IBM
should use the OS as a way to sell DB2 and p5 hardware.

-Steve