RE: API's & Compiling to Prev Release

["Shaw, David" <dshaw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, you left out the part from my original message of forever versus 5
years, which showed that I realized that they already do it, albeit for a
finite amount of time.  As for the money part, perhaps the arguments are
tired and old, but in the end support costs money - is it arrogance or
economics when IBM says they won't support an old release any more?

-----Original Message-----
From: Leif Svalgaard [mailto:leif@leif.org]

----- 
From: Shaw, David <dshaw@spartan.com>
> You're suggesting that they should also provide (to coin
> a term) forward compatibility, to run new programs on old releases?

they already do that: V4R4 back to V4R2 and back to V3R2.
It is arrogance to say: we won't support V3R2 (or CISC) anymore
because we want you to buy the new stuff. Let the customers
move up when *they* are ready, not when IBM's coffers need
some filling. I know all the tired old arguments that it is too
expensive to maintain the old stuff, etc, etc. Fred Brooks
has a quote about that too:

Systems building is an entropy-decreasing process. Program
maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its
mots skillful execution only delays the subsidence of the system 
into unfixable obsolescence.

So either IBM has reached that point with the AS/400 (hence
the name change) or they just want your $$$$. Or both.
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