RE: E-mail notification from AS400

Hans,

I don't think Gary was saying it can't be free.  He, like myself an many
others, do a lot for the community for next to nothing or nothing.  A good
example is David Gibbs and handling all of these mailing lists.  I know I
personally must answer at least 50 or 60 emails a day, all for free.
There's a lot of "free" stuff out there for the AS/400.  If you don't find
it, just ask.  You'll get it most of the time.

I don't think secrets are guarded so much in the AS/400 world.  Just look at
the activity on these lists alone.  Someone asks how to convert lower to
upper case and they get 10000 answers, all correct.  :)  I wish I knew what
these "secrets" were.  Now, if you were to say "well, you don't publish the
source for your shareware" I'd have to disagree.  i don't post it all at
once, but the ideas behind what it does, I have or I've at least said "just
look here or use this API."  There's a fine line between "sharing the
knowledge" and "doing the work".  

When I help people, I try as hard as possible not to do the work for them.
Why?  they don't learn.  Give them enough to get rolling.  They'll hate you
in the beginning, but in the end they'll love you.  :)  

I also feel that comparing the linux community to the AS/400 community is
like paper bags to pez.  I'm not writing my order entry or inventory
applications in python, and I doubt there are many business that would want
to replace their 720 with a Pentium 550 running redhat to take care of their
warehousing.  If you disagree, try running some of those "free" systems and
you won't take M$ for granted so much anymore.  Sure my linux box does a
good job as an internet router and firewall, but it's not ready to do much
more, especially mission critical business software.

In other words, with "free" you also sacrifice quality.  Vendors may charge,
but they also provide support, documentation, quality (in most cases) and
more, all of which are lacking in the "free" software world.

Brad

> Hi Gary!  While I have no problem with the idea of being fairly
> compensated for your work, there is a rather large community in
> which people do willingly share their work with others for free.
> You've probably heard about one product that came out of this
> community - Linux.  Much Linux software is available for free,
> along with an almost endless supply of information and help on it
> that's very easy to find on the internet via your favorite search
> tool.
> 
> One of my biggest beefs about the AS/400 community is how much
> information is guarded and protected.  You can't use any of the
> popular search engines (like Google) since the indexing bots
> can't get past the login screens in the AS400Network.com or
> midrangecomputing.com web sites.  I suppose it's mainly a
> financial consideration for these mags, but they may be cutting
> their own throats by making it difficult for people to get to
> the useful information they offer.  The Linux community shows
> that information CAN be shared for free and yet still make
> money for companies.
> 
> It's so bad that, as far as I know, there are still no FAQ's
> publically available on RPG or any other AS/400 topic!
> 
> Cheers!  Hans
> 
> Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com
> 
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