Re: Showcase for open & free software (Was: Busy day for announcements)

Thanks x-y!

I'll give IBM a salute for strict (usually) backward compatibility, meaning they don't break previous versions, with rare exceptions, like when they got excoriated for breaking the *LIBL variable in CL.

And yep, not conservative enough. The company I work for decided on 3rd party package after attempting modernizing in-house. (Could have had a better strategy though I think). Totally different platform though, no more IBM i.

First off they said two years. Hahaha. Real quick that changed to TEN years. I never tried calculating the cost. Nobody could offer a "perfect fit" so they formed a partnership with the company with the closest fit, agreeing to fill it out together.

But with the invasion of the financial engineering snake known as "private equity", expect to see breathtaking increases on maintenance fees and reduced cross-vendor integration options--anything to boost revenue.

Yes, but they'll fall into their own ditch I think. The free/open-source paradigm needs a bit more tweaking to move into more focused applications. I could say with the help from AI, but I really, really do NOT like AI. it's a dumb--down Trojan horse in my view.

--alan

On 07/11/2025 2:44 AM EDT x y <xy6581@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Hahaha! The i is the golden-est of the golden handcuffs. Larry Ellison is jealous: we have proprietary software, AND proprietary hardware, AND no commitment from IBM on a sunset date.

A $200 million customer would need $20 million and five years to completely deplatform from my app--and I think I'm not conservative enough. Many businesses don't have the financial resources, management expertise, and management depth to execute such a transition. Managing a vendor's technology jump can be murderous--think of what it took S/34 and S/36 users to figure out the System/38 and AS/400. New vendor, new technology, probably new staff? It's a recipe for disaster. The smart folks are stockpiling hardware now!

Good products--actually, smart vendors--don't need to erect exit barriers. Good products engrain themselves into an organization's operations and loyal users can be a very strong glue. But with the invasion of the financial engineering snake known as "private equity", expect to see breathtaking increases on maintenance fees and reduced cross-vendor integration options--anything to boost revenue.

On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 2:37 PM Infodorado InfoDorado via MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx mailto:midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

To me, the way one company alone decides what happens with a hardware or software product, as demonstrated in this discussion. Tech companies try to lock the customer handcuffed to whatever the maestro has. From what I saw from a distance, Oracle is an extreme example of lock-in: it looks like their software is made to resist out-migration.

Long story short, in my opinion, if the world as we know it lasts that long, copyright law and patent law is eventually going to go the way of the dodo bird. Might happen slow for awhile, then all at once.

Open and free software at least is already on the way. It's gotten stalled, because momentum, and because of my point. It becomes complicated and even costly for a business to migrate systems.

IBM i shops already are adopting open source. Apache, multi-layer communications protocol, Linux here, Linux there.

Even patents. A Kaypro customer at one company that made parts for copiers early in the PC era told me that every time they innovated some new thing, that a Japanese company would change some little thing and they would get a brand new patent. A CFO at one company I worked at in Cuba, said a mechanic for the farm collective he worked for asked him to pick up a Ford (1954 I think) truck manual, on his trip to Havana, that the mechanic said he needed to fix a Soviet-made truck, because it's exactly the same truck. Patents sham-ments.

-aec

On 07/09/2025 10:24 AM EDT Rob Berendt <robertowenberendt@xxxxxxxxx mailto:robertowenberendt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


If one is currently in such a situation, where they are just treading water
until a conversion is done, then their existing permanent license will be
sufficient. Granted, in the future this may be more difficult. It will
take more planning on the part of the project manager.

But the days of continuing to run on that Windows 3.1 box, or that IBM i
7.1 release, are behind us now. The security risks are too high.

Those of us anxious to get fully on to IBM i 7.6, but vendors are fighting
tooth and nail against putting some of that maintenance money into hardware
or software upgrades, are getting upset.

Energy prices? I would think that the newer models would consume less
energy.

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