Re: Disturbing rumour

[Justin Taylor <jtaylor.0ab@xxxxxxxxx>]

I don't imagine RDi is going away anytime soon.  However, the IBM
announcement that their copilot will never be brought to RDi bodes ill for
RDi's long-term future.  Of course, RDi will likely carry on for a decade
or two.



On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 11:31 AM x y <xy6581@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Ah--IBM is raising SEU from the dead?  Perhaps the variable for "RDI
> version" defined as packed(5:4).
>
> After everything IBM Has invested in RDi--which is small on the grand scale
> but significant in our world--abandoning it would be lunacy and a betrayal
> to the IBM'ers and Fortrans (a new name for Steve and his team; feel free
> to adopt it).  But then consider the platform's name changes and we'll talk
> about lunacy again over unicorn steaks.  The end of RDi would signal the
> imminent end of the i as we know it--or the Rational product line is
> getting spun off/sold or killed.
>
> Should IBM want out of the dev tools business, the alternative is
> committing to VS Code...or Visual Studio in all its substantial glory and
> capabilities.  However, dev tools can be strategic products when they help
> customers' cloud adoption plans and simplify managing the unholy stew of
> cloud and on-premises applications.  My $0.02 is that IBM won't give up on
> Rational.
>
> Developing something comparable to RDi, *ab initio,* would take years and
> cost $100 million or more.  It would have to be cross-platform--the i
> market is nowhere big enough.  I don't see how a project of that scale and
> impact could remain a secret...and it would be an extraordinarily bad
> decision for IBM to undertake such a project in secret, i.e., without
> community participation.