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O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage

Posted by timothy on from the tradition-of-heritage dept.

theodp writes "After exchanging e-mail with mainframe software pioneer Mario Morino, Tim O'Reilly writes 'It's important for the open source community to look more at the software heritage of the mainframe era.' O'Reilly might want to take a look at how Marino's own MICS software has been used since the 80's to automatically charge IBM mainframe users for printed material that could be ordered from PC clients with a single action by using billing and shipping information that was previously stored on a Mainframe server. The whole process might seem oddly familiar."

2 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Cutler's Windows NT Team... by vudufixit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Set up a Vax system in his house as a prank, as I recall.

  2. Re:How to know when Linux really makes it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Linux should always be questioned, just like the use of every other tool. Linux is fabulous, but it is not all powerful or appropriate for every situation. You should always consider the situation before making a decision about the tool to use.

    Knee-jerk Linux advocacy isn't any better than unthinking opposition to Linux. I actually think its worse. When someone simply opposes Linux, there is probably another solution that either already works, or could be reasonably expected to work on Unix or Windows. An unthinking Linux advocate may push a solution which is unworkable.

    I recently had a discussion with a coworker who though that Linux would be the best OS to use on an Itanium server. I found to be an astonishing view. For our industry there is a growing amount of vendor software that runs on Itanium.... under HP/UX. Hundreds of packages run under HP/UX, but I can only think of about 2 that run under Linux. Linux would clearly be a poor choice for us, and yet that was the automatic answer from my coworker. After some additional discussion it turned out that he didn't really know about the applications, but basically assumed that Linux could do it. I think that is way too common among Linux users.

    Frankly, contrary to you, I think Linux will have made it when it is questioned (like every other IT/engineering solution should be) and chosen as the best solution for the problem, and not because ... ITS LINUX!! IT RULEZ!! No discussion needed d00d.