Hi Rob,
On 5/3/2012 11:48 AM, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
1 - Other than a customer issued edict like "print barcodes" so they
purchase TL Ashford's package, do people on older releases actually
purchase new software? For example, when was the last time you made a new
sale to someone running a version that was long out of support?
About once per week, someone sends me a message asking about support of
HTTPAPI on V5R1 or older. (I currently support V5R2.) And that's free
software -- I would expect more inquiries from those who are paying for it.
The programmers who ask me these questions have a project with business
requirements they have to solve -- they are working in environments
where they are actively developing and enhancing their systems.
The reason they are stuck at an older release varies, but it's usually
not their decision. They have an operations team responsible for that,
and the ops team, or management, or someone like that, isn't ready to
invest the time, money, or work, or incur the risk of breaking an app,
that goes with a release upgrade. That's not to say they won't ever do
it, but really that it's not an immediate priority.
2 - Many existing customers want their vendors to come up with a policy of
only supporting releases currently supported by IBM. That would give them
a 'business' reason to upgrade their OS and maybe even their hardware.
IBM's tools (such as compiling to a previous release, SAVLIB to a
previous release, et al) often force this upon you. For example, since
I'm on IBM i 7.1, I can only create save files back to V5R4. ... and I
distribute HTTPAPI in a save file. I've been forced to provide other
ways of installing HTTPAPI for this very reason. Furthermore, I can't
test any code changes/fixes because I can't compile back to an old
enough release.
Ultimately, if you want to support older releases, you really need at
least two boxes, one at an old release, and one at a new release. This
drives me nuts, and is my primary motivation for discontinuing support
for old releases.
example, if a PC vendor announced they were going to stop supporting
Windows 3.1 and you had to have XP, 2008 or 7 and it meant that the person
could finally go to their manager and say.... [SNIP]
The problem with this analogy is that V5R1 came out about the same time
as Windows XP. .... and all PC software (well, almost all) still
supports Windows XP!
Supporting Win 3.1 would be more like supporting V2R2.
3 - Would you rather please the small market of people who still run
obsolete hardware, or be able to take advantage of the larger pool of
people who still occasionally write checks for IT department purchases?
That's the $64k question, isn't it? But in order to answer it, you need
to know exactly how small that "small market of people" is.
I don't think there's one "right" or "wrong" answer for every project.
I think you should support the releases that IBM supports at a
_minimum_, and then support older releases when it's practical to do so.
The practicality depends on how stable/mature your codebase is, how
badly you need the new features, and how many customers demand the old
releases.
That's my opinion.
-SK
midrange.com
