RPG III to get a facelift (I'm wondering if you feel charging for RPGIII would help/encourage you to move to RPGIV more aggressively?)

My 2 cents for "I'm wondering if you feel charging for RPGIII would
help/encourage you to move to RPGIV more aggressively?"

 

Nope. Downside has more penalty that just continuing to have the feature
around.  What possible difference could it make? IBM isn't really changing
function or help text, are they?

 

1)                If ISV is still publishing in RPG III and hasn't gotten to
RPG/400-ILE, they likely aren't going to get a developer to change it.  If
they already have a developer on staff, then he's been doing the Rip Van
Winkle sleep, and should be awakened gently. I still know that there are
ISVs who distribute software that runs in the S/36 environment - yikes.

 

2)                If a Customer is still using RPGIII (and they have a
Software subscription), then the BEST you could accomplish is to make them
irritated at having yet another fee for something that should (used to be)
covered. Recall the 'nominal' fee for the RPG XML interface charge, that has
now gone back to being NoCharge.   If the support is yanked, then some
customers will simple STOP where they are, just before the upgrade that
drops support.

 

There will be little incentive for Forcing customers to use "New" languages
(I still have a hard time referring to something that's been around for 8-10
years as 'new'). 

 

 

In summary, if IBM is hoping to force a change, then by all means force
another fee. 

 

But the change they initiate will more likely be this scenario: 

All the young MIS hot-shots that only understand GUI and drank deeply from
free Microsoft training and software libraries have been just itching for
one more reason to initiate a .Net project . starting with "What will IBM
drop next? If we are going to have to change, let's just put this on SQL
server and use some ASP pages. (Oh, we'll need a few more servers, another
administrator, another database engineer, and more operations staff..)