[Info-vax] VMS Cobol - GnuCOBOL

[bill]

On 2/26/2023 6:47 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 

Times have changed.  In this factor as well as the rest.

My first full-time job as a programmer was doing applications
programming on a Univac 1100 mainframe.  I was pretty good at
and I worked hard.  The reward was a transfer from SAPB (Systems
Analysis and Programming Branch) to SSSB (Systems Software Support
Branch).

At one time IT departments had systems people as well as applications
people.  I miss those days.

bill