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Wow, I love your post, Harry! I don't agree with many of your assertions, but truly appreciate the loyalty evidenced by the impassioned prose. Having worked directly on this system and its predecessors for most of my career, I too understand that it's special. A line-by-line debate probably wouldn't be productive for either of us, but I'd like to make the following points so you and others better understand the reasoning behind this change. First, Bruce didn't author the post, nor did some manager decide that better integrity is the way to go. Real customer problems motivate this change. The language in the post isn't political; it's what we're actually planning to accomplish. We're also very sincere about providing an opportunity to improve the system with additional application programming interfaces. Please request interfaces with as much specificity as possible, so it's clear what the exact needs are. Please don't dismiss this request by assuming you'll work around this change. Integrity improvements are ongoing and most aren't preannounced. This change could affect applications with legitimate purposes implemented by unsafe means, and we all want useful applications to continue to be successful. That's why this notice is being put out before the change is made. A cornerstone of iSeries systems is their integrity, where integrity is defined as doing what the system is designed to do, and only those things. Is the system integrity impervious? No, there's no such computer system in existence. On the other hand, iSeries integrity and reliability are already very strong in most ways. We strive to keep that advantage, yet integrity is not static; continual improvements must be made in order to maintain or improve upon it, as the uses and users of computer systems change. You implied that resource applied to improving integrity should be used for other purposes. The particular system change noted in Bruce's post will take very little development resource. Providing new interfaces may take significant resource. So, this change isn't about doing things on the cheap; it's investment in doing things the "right" way, which benefits everyone in the long run. Creative people such as many of the readers here can be innovative without potentially compromising the design and implementation of the operating system. You issued a challenge to name specific instances of problems caused by system state use by applications. I assure you they have occurred, but of course I won't break the confidence of those customers by naming them. You also asked for new tools to be more competitive. Here's your chance to ask for specific, helpful interfaces. Please take full advantage of it, to help all of us who want this computer system to continue to succeed. Paul Godtland IBM Rochester (not IBM's official voice)
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