Re: E-mail notification from AS400 -- RPG400-L


Gary wrote:
>For a mere $39.00 per year, you can have a professional membership. And,
>I believe that even includes your own copy of the magazine. That is
>quite a bargain. That's so reasonable that you can painlessly pay for it
>yourself if your company is too tight-fisted.
>
>As a Technical Editor for NEWS/400, I can attest to both the significant
>finances it takes to provide the information (hardware, infrastructure,
>and people aren't free) and the significant effort that many at the
>magazine put forth to help the community.
>
>I speak from personal experience when I mention effort. I know that I
>contribute an enormous amount of time trying to help folks in the AS/400
>community. Yes, I am compensated, but I assure you it is at a rate FAR
>FAR below my consulting rate.
>
>When I witness comments such as the one below, I always wonder how
>willing the commenter would be to work for me for free. Or maybe set up
>an arrangement whereby when the commenter provides a service to me, the
>commenter receives compensation from me based on his or her consulting
>rate; when I provide the service, the commenter in turn pays me at my
>consulting rate. If the way things work now isn't acceptable, either of
>these two alternatives is acceptable to me.
>
>I hope you don't feel like I'm picking on you - I'm not. My goal is
>simply to put into perspective that, in spite of a feeling of
>entitlement, it is not possible to provide all things for all people
>without somehow covering the cost to do so.

Hi Gary!  While I have no problem with the idea of being fairly
compensated for your work, there is a rather large community in
which people do willingly share their work with others for free.
You've probably heard about one product that came out of this
community - Linux.  Much Linux software is available for free,
along with an almost endless supply of information and help on it
that's very easy to find on the internet via your favorite search
tool.

One of my biggest beefs about the AS/400 community is how much
information is guarded and protected.  You can't use any of the
popular search engines (like Google) since the indexing bots
can't get past the login screens in the AS400Network.com or
midrangecomputing.com web sites.  I suppose it's mainly a
financial consideration for these mags, but they may be cutting
their own throats by making it difficult for people to get to
the useful information they offer.  The Linux community shows
that information CAN be shared for free and yet still make
money for companies.

It's so bad that, as far as I know, there are still no FAQ's
publically available on RPG or any other AS/400 topic!

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com

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