Re: Open Source RPG ?

[Mark Phippard <markp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 04/12/2006 12:41:28 PM:

> > 1) Would you be in favor of IBM Open Sourcing RPG ?
> >    (give reasons why or why not if you want)
> 
> I keep hearing this about things, and I really don't understand it. Have 

> you _ever_ heard of a company releasing an old commercial application as 

> open source?  Did it work out?

I agree.  Open source is about having a community of developers, the 
source itself is a small part of that.

> Even if by some miracle it did, who would maintain the compiler?  Who 
> would make it work on each new release of the operating system?  Who 
would 
> make enhancements to it?
> 
> How many RPG programmers do you know who are capable of writing a 
> compiler?!

This would also be my next point.  I was under the impression that the 
compiler was not even developed in a language that you can develop on 
OS/400.  Does anyone know what it is currently written in?  I thought at 
one point it was developed on another platform and they had a 
cross-compiler that made the OS/400 objects.  Maybe that has changed now 
that more of the code is in C++.  Regardless, I doubt there are very many 
RPG programmers that could maintain the compiler and who else would want 
to.

Finally, what is wrong with what IBM has been doing?  It seems like they 
have been doing a great job with the compiler.  Most of the things that 
people probably think they would want to add would need to be added by the 
OS so that the compiler could leverage it.

I see zero value in an open source RPG.

Mark

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