[plug] USA software legislation

[John Summerfield]

> John Summerfield wrote:
> > 
> > Your formatting could have been a little better;-(
> 
> I copied and pasted the text, for the benefit of those who could not follow t
> he
> URL, or, who wanted to see the text, rather than go to the URL.
> 
> You want me to reformat it, as well?

It was jolly nice of you, but hy not? Makes it easier to impart your 
message.


> ><snip>
> 
> > I don't think OSS software's going to have much impact here; I don't see
> > anyone finding the resources to put together free software comparable to
> > OS/390, VTAM, CICS, DB2, IMS/DB, IMS/DC, JES2, JES3 etc.
> 
> Why not?

Well, to run OS/390, you need a fairly decent computer. I worked for 
Amdahl a few years ago; 2.5 million US got you a CPU and a few bits, about 
equivalent to a system unit on the PC. Add a few disk drives, tape drives, 
terminals, communications equipment, you're spending a few bucks.

i did some work for IBM a few years ago; I and the others on the project 
were in Perth, the computer in Sydney. There were thousands of logged-on 
users  on VM. As any one of those users just might have been running 
MV/ESA (precursor to OS/390) or VSE/ESA, or even VM in their session, 
there's just no telling how many users were using the hardware.

It happens that you need VTAM to connect your terminal to the computer; if 
you write a replacement and it breaks, you can't communicate the the 
computer any more. You get round this by running VM and using virtual 
hardware.

Then you need exclusive use of pretty decent hardware to test the software 
under load; absolutely nobody is going to bet their Fortune 500 business 
on software the can't see running at least better than IBM's under a load.

OS/390 is the latest in a family of operating systems dating from the 
1960s; VTAM dates from the 70s, IMS from 60s, JES2 & JES3 ditto (or very 
early 70s), and so on. They're mature products with earned reputations for 
reliability.

You can be sure that the big banks expect more of their RDBMSs that 
relatively small organisations such as the local IAPs, universities and so 
on.

Either the software lied, or the last mainframe I worked on had a few 
hundred megabytes of RAM.

In short, mainframe hardware is much larger and more expensive than PCs; 
may be though it's not dearer per user.

Add to the hardware the software licences needed to run the system; VM, 
CMS, MVS. JES2, VTAM, an assembler, at least one compiler (and you can't 
even get the best compiler afaik), TSSO/I, ISPF....

It's true that there are service bureaux where one can buy time, but you 
get the idea it's an expensive undertaking. While it might not take 30 
years for a sufficient number of skilled programmers to replicate OS/390, 
it's still a far far larger task than Linux.

Nobody has duplicate MVS legally; Fujitsu and Hitachi have their own 
equivalents, but they were both sued successfully by IBM and pay IBM 
licence fees now. I noticed (in the early 80s) that Fujitsu even 
duplicated an erroneous error message in its TSO equivalent:-
	dataset or memeber not found.

> > 
> > Bear in mind that the DB2 you might see running under Linux isn't quite
> > the same as IBM's mainframe customers use.
> 
> Are you saying that the ports done by Informix and by Oracle, to Linux, are n
> ot
> genuine, given that both have seats on the Board Of Directors of Linux
> International?


No doubt they're genuine. Almost certainly substantially the same as the 
versions on OS/2 and NT. Nobody would seriously expect such machines to 
carry BankWest's databases, let alone the Big Fours'.

Whether they're as capable as the versions running on big IBM mainframes 
is altogether another matter.

-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.