RE: open source rpg compiler -- RPG400-L

Mark,

1) I am not talking about new developers in rpg, but the existing ones. Lots
of them uses rpg and opensource tools. Integration can be the key here....

2) I agree with you. Its indeed proprietary to IBM. Can IBM create linkage
classes to maintain this? Probably they wont.

3) I think this will be a big challange. If you take babyRpg for instants,
its been tried. Unsuccesfull unfortunately.

4) that can be somekind of service to maintain the latest version.

I am still convinced, that there is a possibillity of creating an opensource
version of RPG. But IBM needs to reviel there API calling structure in order
to create a linkage library for the different platforms. I do understand
that this is difficult and I think that IBM rather not reviel this
information. I also think that this is wishfull thinking of having an
opensource rpg language.

Henk.

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of M. Lazarus
Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2003 5:51 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: open source rpg compiler


Henk, steve,

At 5/4/03 06:29 AM, you wrote:
>Sorry... here I disagree. I know a lot of people, who like me, favors
>opensource. When the rpg-ile compiler becomes opensource, we can
>crossplatform this language. This opens perspectives. I think that
>supporting the rpg-ile to opensource is the way to go. It will keep the
>language alive.

1)  There has to be general interest in the RPG language to begin
with.   There seems to be very little of that outside of the existing
Midrange community.  RPG is perceived to be a dinosaur - not a "cool"
language.  Making it open source will NOT change that.

2)  The RPG ILE compiler (even if it is only in the "linkage" portion,
several steps past the parser portion) is closely linked to "ILE
technology", which is proprietary to IBM.  This means that the details of
that process would have to be opened up to the public.  If that doesn't
happen (and there's no benefit for IBM to make that happen), the product
would be pretty much useless to the general public.

3)  I think that the language and testing tools are written in a
proprietary language, which would be pretty much useless to the general
public.

4)  I believe that we would end up w/ a bunch of non-standard plug-in
libraries, instead of an across the board standard that we can rely on.  I
for one don't want to have to make sure that I have the latest library
plug-in every time a feature is needed.

    As much as I would like features to quickly and magically appear in the
language, I think that we would lose a lot more by making it open source.

  -mark

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