Hello Rob,
Am 15.12.2022 um 13:45 schrieb Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx>:
Depends on your personal choices as a hobbyist. Me, I would probably be better off with a cloud service as I like the latest versions of the OS. Having to live within the constraints of a version long out of service would slay me.
I know that you're Mr. Bleeding-Edge. ;-)
Fr Hobbyists, vendor support is most often not existing. Either because of outdated hard- and software, or just because of sheer amount of money charged.
Besides that, *personally* I rarely miss something in older releases. Normally, it's an inconvenience and nothing serious:
- Would be nice to handle image catalogs (or even single images) in V4,
- Would be nice of V3 would know EVAL, and (E) on file I/O and %STATUS. Can't remember which one didn't work when trying to compile .
Others may wince in pain, but I really don't mind writing positional RPG. My personal opinion is: RPG has been positional since it's inception. Free, and all-free changed the syntax and overall appearance so much that especially all-free keeps virtually no resemblance to the original RPG. IBM should have renamed it, but they kept the name: probably to not worry or even put off long-term programmers. :-)
Business wise I find it horrific when I have a vendor who runs some ancient machine. When they send me crap that needs to be recompiled before I can even install it I go ballistic. When they rely upon their customers to tell them if it works on the latest OS or not I get ill.
I know. You probably know the pros and cons of your attitude fairly well. :-)
Perhaps you could get a version of Linux to run on such a machine.
Why should I want to do that? Linux is Linux, no matter the underlying platform. Can have this with an ordinary PC wich much less power dissipation.
However, would even that be limited to older versions of Linux?
Not necessarily. The main issue is the availability of distributions with PPC64 Big Endian Support. AFAIK, only POWER 8 has equivalent functionality in BE and LE mode.
But I find no value to IBM easing the restrictions on hobbyists running obsolete versions of the OS on obsolete versions of the hardware.
The value for IBM would be to have more "pro" speakers about the platform and a bigger community. And while hobbyists learn, they maybe choose to work with IBM i for a living. Employment opportunities still exist. This in turn means more hardware and license sales for IBM with an investment of close to zero.
I don't know how many AS/400's have been scrapped because a shiny new consultant without any clue talked the boss into tossing the iSeries and replace that thing with "much cheaper" Windows servers. You probably are aware of likewise stories in the industry and how often they cost much much more in the end. Raising knowledge and awareness about the platform can lessen this "I don't know it, so get rid of it" attitude.
Also, there might be people successfully trying to bring more open source to the platform. By developing new stuff, but also by porting. Not necessarily by just recompiling on AIX, but doing true ports to the CL environment, which eases cross-environment issues (PASE <=> CL).
Three reasons. And I've not even started to seriously *think*.
And the risk of businesses using easing of such restrictions to skirt around the rules is too great.
IBM *is* the rules, in a way. They have hoards of lawyers. If you agree to the license terms and conditions and don't adhere and they get to know about it, you'll go down in a lawyer stampede.
Look around. IBM i shops usually stay current with the OS and hardware: If "the AS/400 is down" costs considerable amounts of money by the minute, the shop's tech requires someone to fix the problem ASAP and take the blame.
Also, ISVs can choose to no longer support unsupported OS releases.
Shops running 25 years old — once bought — hard- and software don't get IBM additional money, but they also don't cost them money — this is not the same as piracy but not too far away from hobbyists inheriting old machinery before it's scrapped. And hobbyists usually don't make money by using the machine.
People in this group have more than once stated that they keep the stuff running until they retire. Then it's someone else's problem, which might mean the platform will be prey to diligent consultants, and "just solve the problem" bosses, offering to replace it with cheaper Windows servers.
I assert the problem isn't serious enough to think about it more than just a few minutes.
After all look at the number of people who scratch install every 70 days to get past some licensing issues.
I'd to this at most three times before I'd be fed up. But then, that's just me.
:wq! PoC
midrange.com
