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The Wheels Are Turning

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  • The Wheels Are Turning

    Nathan wrote: "...but it may be useful to illustrate a problem endemic of our society and culture in general, which is the idea of promoting the exchange of something of value for free." In a free-market capitalist system, value is determined by the marketplace. If you try to sell your product for $1000 and no one buys it, is it really worth $1000? Computer software stretches the limits of capitalism in ways no one could have imagined 50 years ago. Since the cost of creating an instance of a software product is essentially zero, it is possible to give away a product for free and not lose money. Critics might argue that there's no sense in giving away valuable software for free. But it is a fact that there is already a heck of a lot of really good software available for free. And it's not going away any time soon. If you are in the business of selling software, you then have to live with that reality and adjust your business plan accordingly. No businessman can afford to ignore market realities. It is also a fact that some businesses thrive even though they make their software available for free. As I pointed out, there are ways to make money, if you understand the marketplace. That's not to say that kind of business model is applicable to all lines of business. And maybe it wouldn't work for everyone in the midrange or mainframe arenas where software products can easily sell in the 5 or 6 figure range. To clarify, I don't entirely disagree with Bob's decision to pin a 4 figure price on his xTools product. A 4 figure price for a s/w toolkit is not unreasonable in either the midrange or mainframe market. But IMO, I think he's in an awkward middle ground. Look around - xTools has some free competition: iSeries Toolkit and CGIDEV2 to name just two. Cheers! Hans

  • #2
    The Wheels Are Turning

    ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
    ** This thread discusses the Content article: The Wheels Are Turning **
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    • #3
      The Wheels Are Turning

      ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
      I used to have a subscription to an AS400 magazine, the boss is agreeing to continue the subscription, but he wants to consider it like he does me a personal favor, insted of considering it as a value to the company. So I do not need such favors and would rather write my own code and read free articles on the internet.

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      • #4
        The Wheels Are Turning

        ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
        Bob, You claim:
        In virtually every shop I visit, people claim they would rather use a >tool than write their own version of a routine, but in practice, even >when such a tool is available, they write their own version >anyway--effectively reinventing the wheel. So why do you think they do that? Are they telling white lies just to humour you or what?
        If I want to use a word processor on my PC, I can 1. go to the shop and buy MS Office (or WP, SmartSuite) 2. 'borrow' a copy of MS Office 3. download OpenOffice for free 4. write my own Whatever my choice is (how many people would write their own), I can take care of it myself. Now if I want to create a user space on an iSeries, I can 1. find out who is responsible for buying software, convince him/her that we need a tool, wait for the software to arrive, find out who is responsible for installing software, instruct him/her to install the tool. 2. write a program that calls an IBM API and convince my manager that I spent my time in a useful manner. My guess is that many people write their own just to avoid the hassle that comes with larger organisations. Joep Beckeringh

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        • #5
          The Wheels Are Turning

          ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
          The problem with your logic, Bob, is that you don't think like a manager. In most companies I've worked for, the cost of a programmer's time is already paid for, so it doesn't cost them extra if you write the tool that's readily available, but costs additional money. (In their opinion.) Heck, half the places I've worked in won't spend the money for basic tools like DBU and Hawkeye. It's almost impossible to talk to them about code libraries. I think programmers also like to understand the tool they're using. They're probably going to spend time researching user spaces even if they have a tool to create and use them. So you don't gain back all the time that would have been spent creating one. Lastly, my experience with tools has been that, while they come close, they don't always do exactly what you need to do in your application. Having the free examples enables you to tweak them to fit your situation. I always make it clear in the comments in my code where a particular example came from, not only to give credit where credit is due, but also to enable whoever follows me to research the code should they have a need.

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          • #6
            The Wheels Are Turning

            ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
            As an employee of a major iSeries software vendor, I can certainly relate to the points Bob makes, we live them here every day. Before I came to this company, I worked in "the real world" and not only wrote code, but purchased software. So I feel I have a fair view of both sides of the fence. Not long ago, I wrote a white paper called "To Buy it or Write it Yourself" (which I will be happy to email to anyone interested). Some things in it that Bob did not mention: * Most shops are so seriously backlogged with business-essential requests that spending valuable resources to write something that I could buy is poor management. * yes the eval, justification, installation, training and configuration takes time. The more extensive the software, the more the time, but also the more the "savings" in your developers' time. * the cost of writing the software in ONLY THE BEGINNING! Now you have to maintain it, document it, teach it, enhance it...forever and ever, amen. Do YOU really want to be tied to this for the rest of your career? Do you really think you'll be able to offload it to someone new? * who at your company is the resident expert in Change Management? Exit Point Security? Performance Management? Help Desk? Probably no one. So don't forget to add the time to learn all the ropes in that area before you try and write up a solution or your solution will more than likely fall short. * you may need a solution to meet, say, ten essential needs. As Bob says, you will spend $XXXX to create the software yourself to meet those needs, but just barely. What if you could spend the same, or even LESS, and not only meet those ten essential needs perfectly but also gain another 20 "would be nice to have but we can't afford more time write" needs? * what if the operating system, the database, the security, the interface upon which your home grown system is based changes? Once again, drop everything IMMEDIATELY and rework your design. At this point, you may well feel that I have given a lot of focus to the benefits of buying and not enough “quality time” to the benefits of writing. You are exactly right, so I have. To be sure, there are times when writing is the preferred -if not the only- solution. However, the case for writing it yourself is SO well known and SO prevalent in the industry--almost to the point of being the ONLY option ever considered. My goal here today was to offer you another point of view, making whatever choice you make to be an informed choice.

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            • #7
              The Wheels Are Turning

              ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
              Bob, I agreed absolutely with what you said but you contributed to the problem further by publishing yet another procedure or piece of stand alone code. One of the things that needs to be done is to not publish or provide examples without putting them in full featured service programs or referring to examples that feature a service program. Everytime we publish another piece of standard alone code, we are contributing to the problem.

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              • #8
                The Wheels Are Turning

                ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
                I've written a lot of code over the years and I would have liked to use existing code but, the problem was discovering this code. There were no search engines; the internet did not exist and the program code was frequently hidden away somewhere inside some vendor's package The other problem was (as is today) that it didn't quite do what was needed. Perhaps different type search engines will help and perhaps object like code that can be extended will help with modifications. Regards, Tom Birchmire

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                • #9
                  The Wheels Are Turning

                  ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
                  I have often wondered about this situation, and I think EliseatTyco has it right. I'd like to expand on this a bit: 1). The programmer's time is a "sunk cost". It's virtually a check-off item on the budget, and it will be spent regardless (I'm assuming a regular employee-employer relationship here, not a contractor or other hours-billed situation. Therefore many (most?) employers are rather casual about spending this time; 2). Buying code or toolkits is an incremental cost. Each of these has to be specifically and individually justified. If a budget cutback is coming down the line, these are among the first items to be cut (along with training and professional development, but that's another story); 3). Since buying packages is an incremental cost, it needs advance planning to fit within the budgeting cycle. Most projects I've worked upon, you don't know or fully appreciate that there is an opportunity to use an existing toolkit until you are deep into the development cycle. Then it's too late for budgeting, so you end up surprising your manager with an unbudgeted request. This is a serious political problem and not the road to success; 4). On the other hand, if you speculatively buy a code toolkit, you may get little or no use from it, because you bought it in advance of a clearly defined need. And by the way, how do you effectively evaluate the quality, standards, documentation and appropriateness of a code toolkit anyway? I know that there's an answer, but do most people want to spend the time involved? In advance of a clearly defined business need? Remember, you don't buy a generic product because of a generic feeling that it's a good thing to do. You buy a specific product to fulfill a specific need, and it has a specific cost; 5). Programmers aren't managers. Most don't have budgets, or any significant purchasing authority. That whole organizational aspect is foreign to them at some level, and many don't want to get involved either. On the other hand, they are programmers. They have skills and tools. The path of least resistance for them is frequently just to do it themselves.

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                  • #10
                    The Wheels Are Turning

                    ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
                    I think it's all price. a $1000 for a software package is a lot of money. and the only reason it exists is because open source/free software hasn't taken off in iseries land like it did in unix land. Never mind that the price of so many things is tied to the plevel or size of you machine. as an example, I use sequel's email app and was seriously considering it for doing a big report to pdf conversion process where all my reports get distributed to users via a website. in the end, I only used it to demonstrate that I could do it. Instead I did all the necessary html and pdf code bits in python on the website. IT WAS FASTER. I spent as much time getting the spooled files from an outq into a file for download to the website as I did with the python code (thanks to reportlabs a free library for working with pdf in python). It took me so long because I couldn't find a good example of how to do it. I ended up writing my own cl to handle the cpysplf and an rpg with QCAEXEC to handle the cl calls reading a db file generated from wrkoutq *print. Sequel does lots of this for me, but not quite everything. I think the whole thing was a wash in pure costs and now I'm NOT dependent on maintaining a license when I switch out my iseries box for a new one. what's unfortunate is the whole price of software and libraries has pushed me to move more and more of my processing away from the iseries and to unix where writing the pyton code is much quicker and I have lots of free libraries and tools such as the excellent MySQL. I'm even handling almost all my record insert code in python on the webserver by creating sql statements and then processing them on the iseries with runsqlstm. yes it's incredibly slow. like 50 times slower than rpg, but my code takes minutes to write. if runsqlstm was faster (not unlike processing a file with mysql) I would be in heaven. so I suppose I am taking your advice and using available libraries, tools, and utilities... I'm just not doing it on the iseries anymore.

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                    • #11
                      The Wheels Are Turning

                      ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
                      These are all good comments. Thanks! I often wonder how long in the iSeries marketspace, so called "free examples on the Internet" will last when the people behind these things are also trying to make a living. Sure there is the occassional rare individual such as Scott Klement, who works for a traditional non-IT business for which he is the IT manager and gets paid even if his published works generate zero dollars in referrals. But for people like me, for example, where is the incentive to continue to publish "free examples" or provide "free tools" for the iSeries market? What is my return if people are only going to use the free stuff but never try to have their company purchase the other things? I understand all that's been said. It just seems like one more nail in the AS/400 coffin to me. I think we may find out more sometime in January 2006.

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                      • #12
                        The Wheels Are Turning

                        ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
                        Calvin0, "$1000 for a software package is a lot of money." No it isn't. But that's all about perspective. I could say that what you charge your company for on a daily basis is "a lot of money" for what they get in return. I'm not trying to be rud, just factual. I mean, you are right if you are using the iSeries like a couple of networked PCs. Sure a small company can't afford $1000 packages and thinks $1000 is a lot of money. $1000 was a lot of money in 1975 but today in 2005 it is "mice nuts" (to quote my brother). I spent more than that myself on a new iMac that I only use to do Final Cut Pro video editing. And I'm just one person. It really is all about perspective I suppose. And yes, a vast number of iSeries shops stem from the old S/36 crowd which would have never migrated to iSeries (or AS/400) if IBM hadn't stopped shipping updates for SSP on the S/36--they'd probably still have the same hardware. These shops are not of interest to me nor to probably all iSeries software houses simply because they think $1000 is a lot of money. Microsoft Office costs $129 for the Student/Teacher edition, and about $495 for the regular edition. So at $500 that's 50% of an entry-level iSeries tool package. And yet, MS is going to sell several hundred million copies of Office. On the iSeries if a company has more than 2000 customers, they're considered a great success. Of the 4 iSeries software houses that have more than 2000 customers ( a couple approaching 10,000 ) they sell their products for about the $700 to $3000 price point depending on processor group. If they could have sold several hundred million copies, I'm sure they would have lowered the price. Take Microsoft, the only reason they continue to come out with new products, such as Windows Movie Maker, and that photo program and not charge anything for them, or charge $40 for them, is because they want to keep their name out there so that when they announce Office 2006, you'll run out and buy it. Their software isn't free, it is merely being used as marketing tools to keep you on the Windows platform. The other platforms are currently offering a lot of free stuff because nobody is buying stuff for those platforms. Have you purchased a software package for Linux/Unix?

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                        • #13
                          The Wheels Are Turning

                          ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
                          Pardon my ignorance, I must have missed something... what happens in Jan 2006? Chris

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                          • #14
                            The Wheels Are Turning

                            ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
                            I can't talk about it, yet.

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                            • #15
                              The Wheels Are Turning

                              ** This thread discusses the article: The Wheels Are Turning **
                              You already have. Dave

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