A startup? Thinking about Z? Be serious. They're all cloud/Linux etc., because "Free". The percentage of startups who would even consider the mainframe is close to zero. That doesn't make them right, but I'm confident in that assertion.
And please don't think that I'm denying that there are lots of problems with FOSS! But, ya know, "Free"... As an ISV we're seeing a HUGE uptick in CVEs, and even when they're not relevant to our product, we get pinged about them: e.g., some obscure feature of Apache has a vulnerability, but our product runs as a software appliance that's quite locked down and doesn't go near to enabling that feature--but Veracode and friends show it as "vulnerable" so we have to respond. This is a non-trivial cost to us, but of course is invisible to management despite our best efforts. And of course reflects costs to the customer as well. Now, closed source might or might not be more secure--but it mostly/entirely won't have public CVEs against it, so the customer can at least pretend to be confident in it without this constant churn. There's also still a huge "IBM is evil" attitude out there. And since Linux is where most folks start tinkering these days, they'd have to either start on Z (even less likely) or move to it. And "It works, why would we move?" Yeah, yeah, *we* know, but you'll never convince them. I was the mainframe guy at Linuxcare back (gulp) 24 years ago, and while the Linux kids came around to the values of the mainframe, it was an uphill battle. And that was with someone (me!) already convinced. Without an internal advocate, it'll never, ever happen, sorry. I feel like this answer is maybe sort of orthogonal to your points, but maybe not? And yes, the customers are also clowns! Look at all the "We must get off the mainframe" initiatives that persist long past the original target date. "It ain't workin'" doesn't seem to be a valid argument with these folks. Nope, the boat has left the harbor. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Paul Edwards Sent: Friday, October 31, 2025 10:40 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Is z/OS finally doomed? WAS: How to collect multiple datasets attributes On Fri, 31 Oct 2025 09:09:10 -0400, Phil Smith III <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Phil - you inspired me to argue with myself. Or play Devil's Advocate - whatever. > Yeah, I think the ship has sailed. People believe that > cloud/clusters/whatever of Linux machines are Good Enough, and Good Enough is > Good Enough. I haz a sad. So this is a good point that I omitted before, because it had slipped my mind. The theoretical scenario was a startup. So - are there circumstances where a startup would choose IBM? Yes, there is the single supplier - nominally. However, first I would argue that that's the only supplier that isn't a clown show. IBM has a business model that ensures that costs are amortized and all problems will be solved. Everyone else is on shaky ground, taking their chances with "free" software. I think a lot of problems in the IT industry stem from anyone believing that you can get something for free. And yes - I'm one of those people producing nominally free software myself - but I'm not expecting anyone to put their production system on it. I wouldn't. It's missing the "commercialization" step before you can think of doing that. But let's say there is a sensible startup, that knows they don't want to take their chances with clowns if they actually end up being successful. So there is literally only one choice for both software and hardware. When they reach that point in time, is IBM's charge going to be the biggest business expense they have? Even if it is - is that a problem? Everyone is in the same boat. They just advertise themselves as a non-clown operation, and pass the costs on to the customer. (You may run into a problem here with customers themselves being clowns). Ok, so if they theoretically see that as the end game, how do they start out? Just a suggestion - how about they start with a variation of the clown show that doesn't rely on the expectation that they can use 100% of the machine's capacity? Specifically they run a variation of emulator - Hercules is the most famous, but FSI has a commercial one too - including z instructions (the ones they use should all be out of patent now). And MVS 3.8J can be run. Sure - you're restricted to 16 MiB - but - so what? Perhaps that's part of the problem with the IT industry - people expecting more than 16 MiB of memory. Here's something someone else wrote: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-you-leave-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/answer/Jeff-Sturm-2 What's the biggest genuine executable you've ever written? The biggest actual executable with what I consider to be "genuine" code is gcc 3.2.3. It is 400,000 lines of C code, that translates into 700,000 lines of assembler code, and produces a 3 MB executable. Easily fits within 16 MiB. Is your startup going to produce a 400,000 line application? After how many decades? Can you even maintain that? What if you lose the one guy who can actually maintain that? By the time you get anywhere near that, I would expect you to have moved to genuine IBM hardware. My own code - written over 3 decades - and not completely alone - comes to something like 70,000 lines of code, and fits on a 360k floppy as main executables. People quite literally ran MVS 3.8J for their production systems too. And then there can be other mitigating factors. If you write your application in C90, you can at least theoretically move to a non-IBM system if they did screw you over too badly. C90 is just an example I am familiar with. Presumably a "better" language could achieve the same result. There is no legacy as you choose the language for your startup. Be cautious wherever you take your startup, and keep an eye on the fire exit at all times. And you should be able to hop off z/OS and onto MVS 3.8J if the worst happens. That can be your DR system. Even if you have to have a reserve budget for a very powerful non-IBM system (or maybe the cloud can rescue you there?) to run under emulation, as you are forced to join the clown show due to unforeseen circumstances. And again - even if your main business system is running on the non-clown IBM system, you can still offload less important stuff onto clown systems. Not just MVS 3.8J, but the EBCDIC x64 (ucx64e.zip from pdos.org) could have a role. Or a variation of that. There is no need for it to be called "mini-Windows". It could be called "mini-OS/2" or "mini-Linux" (ie those APIs can be supported - to a similar functional extent - if required). > And with the erosion of skills available, going TO IBM Z at this point > would be very, very difficult and very, very expensive. I just don't > see it, try as I might. And this shouldn't be an issue either. A startup could be up and running on MVS 3.8J pretty quickly. ie getting their first "hello world" to run successfully. And remember - this is all based on the assumption that a startup has the attitude that they want to end up on the mainframe like the rest of the Fortune 500. Aiming for professionalism or whatever. And again - just posing this as a theoretical possibility. Otherwise the alternative is what? No new players will ever be onboarded? Or maybe the original suggestion was indeed technically correct - a $10k system will exactly provide the necessary stepping stone? And IBM so far hasn't seen the need for such a stepping stone because they are legitimately short-sighted? Maybe IBM could allow zPDT for this purpose as well - but again - too short-sighted? Or perhaps MVS 3.8J (or other alternatives) could force IBM to make zPDT available for this purpose. But that also self-evidently didn't happen. But maybe that's because MVS 3.8J is missing one crucial component, like GNU Cobol, that would put it over the edge? What would you personally do if you were going to start a startup? Given your philosophy expressed above, where you personally can see the difference between IBM and everyone else. Starting with - what language would you even use? Starting a new bank, perhaps? How many transactions per second does your new bank need to be able to process? Can that be done under MVS 3.8J? (Note - I personally have travelled a quite narrow path through the IT industry - I'm not claiming to have any answers - nor a broad understanding of anything in particular - I just demonstrated some stuff physically working - nothing more, nothing less - and not for any particular purpose - I'm not expecting people to manufacture physical EBCDIC ANSI X3.64 terminals either - I just wanted to prove that they could be created and used - I haven't proven they can work under TSO on MVS 3.8J though - or perhaps - a dual 3270/EBCDIC ANSI terminal). BFN. Paul. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
