Re: Open Source RPG ?

["Trevor Perry" <tperry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David,

I really am not assuming anything. This came up at Town Hall at COMMON, and 
I think it is a thread worthy of debate. I really do not think it is viable 
to take a well-developed language like RPG and remove it from a vendor who 
continues to support it, and I do believe that IBM should continue to lead 
the way with their RPG language development.

I do think, however, that an open source RPG would have benefits. It is the 
best business language available, IMHO, so it would not hurt to be able to 
use it and port to other platforms. ASNA port to .NET, but this is in a true 
object-oriented, visual development, event driven environment. I think the 
application development part of RPG (forget the UI, forget DDS) would be of 
benefit in many places.

And wouldn't it be nice to have more people RPG-aware than a (primarily) 
green-focused community?

I like this debate. I think we all know the answer...

But maybe the second question has more validity... Should they change the 
name? And, to what? Like Scott, I think there are few people who actually 
focus on it being a 'report' program generator - the language is much more 
modern than its roots.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Gibbs"
Subject: Re: Open Source RPG ?


> Trevor Perry wrote:
> > So, let's follow that model:
> > Have some base version of RPG? Now, add IBM's System i to the mix? Maybe
> > this way, we could get RPG on some more platforms, have college kids 
> > coding
> > with it, and expand the RPG community, and the System i community would 
> > be
> > forced to stop calling it an AS/400? :-)
>
> You are assuming that you could get anyone to work on the project.
>
> People work on o/s projects because they are interested in them.  I
> seriously question the level of interest that an O/S RPG compiler
> project would generate.
>
> david