Re: open source IBM i. was Re: From RGP to ¿Java ?

James,

At 5/8/09 01:06 PM, you wrote:

I personally don't think that RPG needs a nice GUI like others do.

Why do you say this? Have you gone on a sales call where your competition has the GUI and you don't? I have and it's not pretty. The non-GUI software barely has a chance. That's just the reality for most decision makers. They want brand new software that looks and feels brand new.

In the past IBM has tried to give us this and very few people did anything with it, so they gave up and how can blame them.

Did anyone find out WHY it failed? Was it too expensive? Too difficult to implement? To resource hungry? Too limited in functionality?

I'm betting that it was one or more of the above reasons. That does NOT mean that we don't want / need a native GUI to make us competitive. The same way that IBM woke up and included TCP/IP as an integral part of i5/OS or risk losing the entire midrange business, they need to recognize that an integrated, native GUI is crucial to remaining viable.

-mark