On 16 June 2010 01:48, Timothy Sipples <[email protected]> wrote: > Please bear in mind that I do not speak for IBM officially, so "ask your > IBM representative." However, my personal assessment follows. > > Tony Harminc writes: >>Suppose I have three developers, Alice, Bob, and Carol, and they all >>want to use a single Intel machine configured with the minimum of >>whatever it takes to be properly licensed to do z/OS development and >>testing. (For the sake of this discussion, let's assume that none of >>the activities crosses the line into production work of any kind, >>however vaguely that may be defined.) > > It's not vague at all, in my opinion. It's one of the clearer explanations > of permitted uses I've seen, actually.
The announcement says "...may not be used for production workloads of any kind, nor robust development workloads including without limitation production module builds, pre-production testing, stress testing, or performance testing." You may think that clear, but I think it's entirely open to IBM to redefine anything they don't like to fit in to the exclusion list. Why IBM wants to base its licensing on what customers choose to use their hardware and software for, rather than just selling MIPS and getting out of the way, is an interesting question that isn't likely to get answered here. It's obvious that it has led to grief in the past, and doubtless will do so again. Even the airlines don't try to say "if you are flying on this discounted fare, it is a condition of carriage that you may not fly to a business meeting, but only for purposes of personal or family vacation, and only if during your vacation you do not at any time take a phone call from work". Rather, they try to add features that appeal to business travellers to the higher fares, and in various ways make it difficult for them to take advantage of the lower fares. > That said, if Eve the system programmer accesses RDz Unit Test in order > (for example) to set up and/or configure Alice/Bob/Carol/Don's unit test > environment, yes, Eve would need licenses for both RDz and RDz Unit Test. > She's a user. In software licensing there's no such thing as smoking but > not inhaling. :-) So would she need a separate licence for each machine/dongle in the shop, or does one cover all her sysprog tasks on each small group's or individual's machine? I imagine you're going to tell me it's clear... I also think it's quite unrealistic to think that these machines won't need sysprog help. IBM has worked hard on dumbing down the sysprog's job for decades, but the marketing aspect of that has always led the reality by quite a bit. Your average COBOL (or Java for that matter) programmer, will not really know what to do when s/he gets an S0C6 in RACF when submitting that COBOL compile. > But let's add in Maude now. Maude provides z/OS help desk support at Eve's > company. If Alice calls Maude and asks for help, and Maude provides > telephone support, does Maude need a license? No. She's not accessing RDz > Unit Test, she's not using it, she doesn't have a session to it -- she > doesn't need a license. If Maude stands over Alice's shoulder, watches, and > verbally suggests courses of action as Alice works (Alice's permitted > uses), does Maude need a license? Still no. If Maude yanks the keyboard > from Alice's hands and starts typing into TSO (on RDz Unit Test), does > Maude need a license? Yes. > > If Maude then goes to Starbucks, buys a decaf latte, turns on her iPad, > and... Oh, never mind. :-) Very funny. > Support means that you can open PMRs on RDz > Unit Test "container" issues. For example, if you have trouble installing > RDz Unit Test, you can open a PMR. But if you're trying to figure out why > your JCL isn't running in the Unit Test environment, no, that's not > eligible for a PMR. How about that S0C6 that doesn't happen on the production machine? How about an MVS integrity exposure? >>Oh come on - I'm not suggesting any improper use; I'm trying to find >>out how many licences for what components are required and what *is* >>proper use. > > I think the language is pretty darn clear and rather common throughout the > IT industry. Licensing concepts like "user" and "permitted uses" certainly > are not new, especially for application development. They are quite new to the IBM mainframe world. Licensing "per seat" has been around for a long time for application software in certain industries, but this increasingly detailed specification of the nature of the workloads you can run is new to z/OS. >>Sure - I get the general idea, however ill-specified. But might it >>even be the case that only development based on actually using the >>desktop portion of IBM Rational Developer for System z with EGL or IBM >>Rational Developer for System z with Java is permitted? GUI good - >>green-screen bad? > > Does it say that? I don't know if it is trying to say that. You keep telling me it's clear, but it's not. This is part of the problem of bundling together unrelated software components. I can easily see IBM coming back to a customer who leaves the Rational Developer stuff on the shelf and uses this offering for its access to the underlying zArch emulator, and saying "you can't do that - you have to use the GUI bells & whistles". >>I've been reading IBM announcement letters and licence agreements for >>over 30 years, and this is one of the least clear I've encountered. > > We certainly disagree on that. > > I'd like to make another editorial comment at this point. You are not the editor. But feel free to comment. > I suppose we could have a 30+ message dialog about whether Boris, George, and > Melissa > also need licenses. (Answer: if you're asking, yes, almost certainly they > do. That's easy.) It's *not* easy. And it's not particularly helpful to ridicule my honest effort to understand the complex licensing issues surrounding this bundled set of products. > However, let's step back for a moment and pause to > reflect on this product. I say, "Bravo, IBM." A lot of people have been > asking for something like this, and I'm very glad to see it. Well, a lot of people have been asking for a small and affordable zArch mainframe for a long time. And you will know better than I, of course, if a lot of people have been asking for a bundled Rational software/zArch emulator on Intel/z/OS package that's limited to non-robust development, though I've never heard anyone asking for such a thing on any of the lists I read. > Sure, RDz Unit Test is not for everybody, but it is for many. RDz Unit Test > feature -- > along with other steps IBM has taken recently -- are all very helpful in > making it easier, faster, and more affordable to develop on and for z/OS. > That's goodness, unambiguously. Finally something I can't argue with. Though it would have a much higher goodness level if IBM had just made the barebones emulator+z/OS available without all the bundling and restrictions. Which reminds me to wonder how Funsoft stock is doing... Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
