RE: open source rpg compiler

Fortunate because of V5? Yes, /Free? No (in my view).
The first statement about what release is the biggest flaw in the RPG
compiler design. It should NOT be tied to a release. It should be
independent of a release. 
And, as a hasty generalization (which I tend not to like stating but in this
case I believe it) anyone who thinks customers upgrade because of a new
feature in RPG IV in the next release is nuts! In anything, I see more going
the other way (not upgrading) to remain backwards compatible.  Funny,
Microsoft and IBM have switched roles. It used to be IBM was always
dependable with regards to compatibility, now I can the latest version of
Microsoft's development tools on older OS releases and yet target any of
their current OS releases. 


Bob Cozzi
Cozzi Consulting
www.rpgiv.com


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Carel Teijgeler
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 12:02 PM
To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: open source rpg compiler

If there were an OpenSource project for the RPG compiler you would face some
problems:

1) At what OS level are you going to target? Taking the thread of last week,
most fortunate programmers on V5 start using /Free. They would rule out
older OS releases, because they "refuse" to write in the /Fixed syntax. And
I recall you (no personal attack) being one of the advocates to bring new
RPG functionality to the older OS versions.
2) What will be considered enhencements? Should all old opcodes be changed
into BIF's? This means the revival of COMP, I assume. And overloading will
be troublesome considering the workings of prototyping, which I think works
well (type matching on calls). Let's try to make it graphical  for
InfoWindows II monitors, then.
3) To what other platforms should it be ported? And what new capabilities it
would bring to those platforms? Are we not turning oss RPG into an
alternative java or C#? 

By the way, there is an OSS project on the  AS/400: Wyett Earp initiated by
David Kilgore.

Just my two Euro-cents.

Regards,
Carel Teijgeler.

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5-5-03 at 10:55 Bob cozzi wrote:

>The problem with Open Source is not Open Source it is Open Source in the
>iSeries world. Nobody contributes to it. Everybody wants the results of it,
>but nobody wants to put in the effort to make it happen. We registered
>iSeriesOpenSource.com/.org about two years ago, nothing happened. 
>Now, there are several people who have websites that have put in a ton of
>work on utilities and tools for the OS/400 world. Granted some of them have
>included source code. But I have yet to see an Open Source project in the
>iSeries market.  



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