Re: ADTS V6R1 - No SEU updates? -- WDSCI-L

MichaelQuigley@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 02/14/2008 11:39:02 AM:

And really, it's not a mixed message. WDSC is done. Get over it. It was a bad decision to give all that functionality away for free and IBM is fixing it, painful as it is to everyone . . . .

Yea, quite possibly most painful to IBM and the System i community. It just might be the final push to MS-development tools. For instance because of our nonprofit status, we can buy the entire license to Visual Studio for less than the annual software maintenance looks like it's going to be for RDi let alone RDi-SOA.

Michael, you're bringing in a whole bunch of issues. Can we check them one a a time?

First, How much were you paying for SWMA for 5722WDS? How much more will your SWMA be now? Please, give us real numbers so that we can compare.

As to non-profits, I don't know how that works with IBM, but it's irrelevant to the pricing differential between 5722WDS and the new 5761WDS and related tools. You weren't getting a non-profit discount for 5722WDS, so again, it goes back to the comparison of SWMA vs SWMA for the old license and the new license.

RDi-SOA is different. Remember, RDi-SOA isn't for J2EE development - it's for EGL development If you are, you really were getting free development tools. WDSC was built on top of RAD, which IBM charges $1500 a seat for (or something close to that). I've written for years that people were getting a super bargain here, and that's now come to an end.

That's the part I'm telling people to get over. The free version of RAD that was under the covers of WDSC is gone, forever. You can use WDSC 7, but it won't be supported any more than CODE.

Joe, as a side note I usually really enjoy reading your posts to this list (and anywhere else you write). However, "Get over it." probably is going to evoke the same kind of feelings/responses as the "RTFM"-type comments have. People may get over it by going over to the other side--i.e., MS-development. I thought I ought to bring this up because I wouldn't have posted anything in this thread if it weren't for the above quoted paragraph.

Again, what I'm really concerned about is that people continue to try to compare RDi to WDSC. WDSC is gone. It was free, those of us who used it got a lot of function out of it, and the Rational group isn't going to give it to us for free anymore. And it makes sense, because so few System i shops did any J2EE development. EGL is really a much better fit for RPG and COBOL shops than J2EE because it requires no Java knowledge whatsoever.

I don't want top hear anymore about how WDSC was free and RDi costs and that's a ripoff. That's not the case at all. They're simply no longer giving you free development tools. What has happened is that IBM is now unbundling development tools from compilers, and giving you the option of green screen (ADTS) or GUI (RDi). The fact that they're doing it all at once allows some people - people who ought to know better - to complain that IBM is charging for something that used to be free. It's not the case, but I'm not going to argue it any more, because if IBM had done it in two steps, those same people would find something else to complain about.

In fact, I'm not going to argue at all. I'm just laying out the facts. There is no mixed message, and frankly they've done a pretty good job except if they don't allow movement from ADTS to RDi. Here are the facts:

1. WDSC was a free version of a $2000+ development suite
1a. (Because it supported both System i and J2EE development)
2. IBM has pulled the free J2EE development tools.
3. IBM has unbundled development from compilers.
4. IBM gives you a choice, green or GUI, on development tools.
5. IBM gives you an additional option to get EGL.

That's pretty much it. If the current cost for development tools ($800 a seat, as opposed to $1200 a seat for MS Visual Studio Professional) makes you leave the platform then that's going to happen. Your only hope is to convince IBM to give you a non-profit discount like Microsoft does.

Joe