Re: OS/400 on a Sun unix

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brad Stone" <brad@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: OS/400 on a Sun unix


> They would generate sales from the OS.  Look how quickly
> linux became "popular", and then look at it's roots.  If I
> could sell hardware with software, and software alone, I
> would think it would be advantageous.

In all honesty, how many sales do you think you would generate selling the
OS separate?  I don't know anyone that buys an iSeries just because of the
OS.  They buy it for the whole package.  You are buying stability and
performance form end to end.  You run OS/400 on someone else's crappy
ahrdware, and all you just bought is an expensive linux without a GUI.

> I understand as is OS400 is quite proprietary, and that's
> the platform's biggest problem.  Remove that problem and I
> believe it would become more revenue.  A little work, yes.
>  But you don't get anything for nothing.

I put it that it would be a LOT of work, not a little. A LOT of work for
making an OS cross platform for a very very small market.  And it isn;t even
making it cross platform .. it is makign it cross platform while retaining
stability.  The vast majority of problems with Linux and Windows usually
comes down to hardware drivers.  Now you want to introduce that to the
OS/400 as well?