Re: RE: CGIDEV2 -- WEB400

"IBM doesn't care about things costing nothing. They only care about things
that bring in revenue, directly, not indirectly."

And I am still trying to figure out what revenue, exactly, they DO care about. I thought it was anything that drove hardware sales for them but that appears not to be enough. We "sell" open source applications and recently applied to be an iSeries reseller. We were denied because our VAE was open source (presumably because we don't charge for the software). Now why IBM cares what we charge for our application is beyond us. A potential customer could decide that they want to run our application on Websphere rather than Tomcat and thus even drive a few more $$ to IBM. We want to drive *more* iSeries sales and we are looking for recurring service revenue to grow the business but IBM said "No way".

IBM "embraces" open source as a marketing ploy but when it comes to building a 
business around an open source model, they appear not to be interested.  They will 
apparently give more than lip service to open source projects, but it appears that the 
lip service will only extend so far.  They have yet to learn that doing what is right for 
the customer is always right for the business.

Sigh....another example that the elephant can't dance.....

Pete Helgren




Bob Cozzi wrote:

It will cost IBM nothing...

IBM doesn't care about things costing nothing. They only care about things

that bring in revenue, directly, not indirectly.

-Bob Cozzi
www.RPGxTools.com
If everything is under control, you are going too slow.
- Mario Andretti


-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Jim Franz
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 8:53 PM
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: [WEB400] RE: CGIDEV2

Jeeze... what's the big deal.


Jeeze Bob .....
With thousands of sites running CGIDEV2, and business partners having
written packages to sell (and further promote the iSeries), I would take
this as a very illogical move by IBM. An offer has been made to keep the
software going on, at no cost to IBM, and keeping current customers
and partners who invested in this technology happy. And happy customers
buy upgrades and new servers, and happy partners bring in more business
to IBM. Rochester has fairly clearly stated that it is not just a Websphere
platform,
with tools like Websmart (a tool that gens rpgle cgi) in the Tools Network
and the Roadmap. There's also your tool, Joe's tools, Brad's tools, and many
other vendor offerings. What sense is there in pulling the rug on even a
small
segment of your current (declining) customer base. It will cost IBM
"nothing" to keep
this going.
If I were the non-technical CEO of a company, and my IT manager tells me IBM
just did this, with no warning (we had like 5 years of warning for
Officevision...),
I would always remember this when presented with any IBM proposal...
jim franz

----- Original Message -----From: "Bob Cozzi" <cozzi@xxxxxxxxx>

To: "'Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries'" <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 5:43 PM
Subject: RE: [WEB400] RE: CGIDEV2

Jeeze... what's the big deal.
They do this kind of thing every few years or so.
Previously there were no alternatives, but today there is at least one

good

one and probably other options as well.
And at the risk of sounding like so many people who have justified CGIDEV2
by saying "You have the source code", dare I say "you have the source

code".

I guess I don't see the issue. We, who knew of it, got to use it for a
while. Many of us have now moved on to other tools. Those who have not, I
would render a guess that their code still works today as it did

yesterday.

There is really no compelling reason to continue to use a no-charge

product

that is not supported. Its purpose is primarily for examples and to show

how

things can be accomplished with, in this case, RPG IV. Okay, so learn from
it and move on.
These worries sound like someone who lives by a drive-in theater and is

now

complaining that the theater owner is planting trees to block your view of
the movies. It was free for a while, but sooner or later it won't be. That
is how IBM stays in business.

-Bob Cozzi
www.RPGxTools.com
If everything is under control, you are going too slow.
- Mario Andretti