[Info-vax] VMS Cobol - GnuCOBOL

[Dave Froble]

On 2/26/2023 4:30 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/26/2023 3:14 PM, bill wrote:
>> On 2/26/2023 10:05 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2023-02-25 13:00, Neil Rieck wrote:
>>>> (CAVEAT: the down side of opensource is that if you discover a bug, it may
>>>> take years to get it fixed. In some instances you are better off fixing the
>>>> problem yourself then submitting the solution to the authors. This has
>>>> happened to me more times than one would think. This happened to me last
>>>> week with the python SOAP library known as zeep)
>>>
>>> That downside is also an upside. If you discover a bug you do not have to
>>> wait for the author to fix it. If it is urgent/important, you can fix it
>>> immediately yourself. I would say that is a *big* upside.
>>
>> That only works if you still have a real IT Department. Too many
>> businesses have outsourced all of this to the cloud and different
>> kinds of OPC (Other People's Computers) leaving themselves at the
>> mercy of other people to keep their business going.  The IT world
>> has become no different than all the other business with supply
>> chain problems because they decided having it done in another
>> country was a wise decision.
>
> Even if the company has kept an IT department with
> software developers, then very few companies has
> the necessary skill sets or the financials to fund fixing
> large complex open source software like an OS or
> a RDBMS.
>
> Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, LibreOffice etc. are used
> by hundreds of thousands or millions of companies
> world wide. But how many of them could and would
> take on fixing bugs in the source. I suspect that
> would be counted in a few thousands.

My suspicions are no better than yours, but, I'd be surprised if there was even 
100.  System type software is different from application software.


-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
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