RE: IFS in RPG

["David Morris" <David.Morris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joel,

Bob is right, open source is your best bet. The iSeries-toolkit at
http://www.iseries-toolkit.org contains a set of IFS utilities.

David Morris

>>> cozzi@rpgiv.com 07/11/02 04:25PM >>>
Joel,

I think you answered you own question when you asked:

>>why ... are so few utility libraries available for RPG?

Answer...
>> Might even be possible to sell them.

The problem is, developers in the PC world will either purchase a
toolkit for their own use, or get their company to buy it for them. In
the AS/400 and iSeries world if it isn't "free" then programmers do
not
make an effort to get it.
By "free" I mean included in something their company has already
purchased/licensed. For example, if it's in WDTS (if that's still the
name of all the compilers) then they'll use it. If they've licensed
some
$20,000 3rd party package and the library is included in that package,
then they'll use it.

But if it is a few hundred dollars a base set of people/iSeries
Developers will buy it, but not enough to support it.
Consequently stuff that seems expensive for a single user PC at $895
cost you $25,000 on a P30 processor group machine. Why? Because it is
almost the same amount of effort to sell a $25,000 package vs a sub
$1000 package in this market space.

So, for example, if I ship my IFS Toolkit or service program, I would
need to price it at a level that is where I expect it to sell enough
copies to help pay for it's development. So let's say I get lucky and
sell 20 copies the first 60 days.

Let's make up a price of say $5000 just to make the math easier (for
me).

20 x $5000 = $100,000.00

Suppose I tried to sell it for $500 instead.

20 x $500 = $10,000.00

Then in the next 6 months or so, supposed my sales double, I sell
another 20 copies in that timeframe.

Now I'm at $200,000 for about a years work (development and sales) at
the $5000 price, and yet only $20,000 at the $500 price point.

There's no way for me to sell a $500 product for iSeries and justify
the
support, enhancements and the initial development costs.

So that's why (I believe) there is not a huge push to create RPG
library
functions.

Having said that, I have to put in a plug for the upcoming
iSeriesOpenSource.org website. A website where people that write
interesting code for OS/400 can post their source code for others to
use, for free. So if you want to write a free service program for RPG,
that's that place to distribute it.

Bob Cozzi