[Info-vax] VMS Cobol - GnuCOBOL

[Denys Beauchemin]

On Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 1:16:03 PM UTC-6, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/20/2023 5:56 PM, Denys Beauchemin wrote: 
> > Yeah, Gnucobol, in my opinion; is more like something to play around 
> > as a concept; it’s not a serious mission-critical answer for OpenVMS 
> > COBOL migration. The C code it generates is nightmarish.
> If a company is spending X M$ or XX M$ migrating from Cobol/VMS 
> to Cobol/Linux, then paying for a commercial Cobol is not a problem 
> (you prefer Fujitsu - other may prefer Micro Focus). 
> 
> But GnuCOBOL is pretty big in the hobbyist space. 
> 
> Arne

Gnucobol may be big in the hobbyist space, but it's not a viable solution for mission-critical production.  As for the choice of commercial compilers, the price difference between something like Fujitsu NETCOBOL and Micro Focus COBOL is a couple of orders of magnitude.  You only need a development license for NETCOBOl, (a few thousand dollars) and you can run the executables on other servers license-free.  With MF COBOL, you pay for everything, everywhere, and it's not cheap.  I happen to think that's a big factor in the migration decision.  Sites are drawn to open-source, or low-cost licenses.  Witness Postgres Vs Oracle costs.  If someone is going to migrate from a closed system like VMS, they do not want to jump into another environment with huge license costs.