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NetRexx is now free and open source courtesy of IBM

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IainB:
Nostalgic thoughts from having briefly used REXX under MS-DOS/4DOS.
Well done to IBM for giving up yet more superb software to the public domain - even though it is software that is arguably fading  into obsolescence or is already obsolete.
Better that than to just bury it.

cranioscopical:
Nostalgic thoughts from having briefly used REXX under MS-DOS/4DOS.
-IainB (June 15, 2011, 02:19 AM)
--- End quote ---

Mansfield/Quercus?

40hz:
Nostalgic thoughts from having briefly used REXX under MS-DOS/4DOS.
Well done to IBM for giving up yet more superb software to the public domain - even though it is software that is arguably fading  into obsolescence or is already obsolete.
Better that than to just bury it.
-IainB (June 15, 2011, 02:19 AM)
--- End quote ---

I don't think it's all that obsolete. Rexx still gets used quite a bit in the systems world.

It's a very powerful language that fills a useful niche in the language kingdom. I've often heard Rexx compared to Java for functionality and power. I don't know enough about Java to know how accurate the comparison is. But "it's like Java done right" is how I've often heard it described.

At any rate the RexxLA has no intention of letting it fade. And now that they control the source, I think you're gonna really see them run with the ball they've been handed.

Hope so anyway. The more choices the merrier. Especially if they're "open" choices.
 :)

IainB:
@cranioscopical: Yes, quite.

@40hz: If your optimistic thinking and your faith are rewarded in the fullness of time and shown by events to have accurately predicted the future for REXX, then that would run contrary to IBM's past corporate behaviours and strategems.

A brief review of IBM corporate strategy would generally indicate that nothing of commercial value to IBM was given up by or taken from IBM excepting by legal force - e.g., the antitrust legislation used against it in the '70s to force it to exit its monopoly position and sell off its computer bureau services arm (I recall that CDC bought that). For many years, IBM reputedly took out more patents each year than any other corporation on the planet. It would be incorrect to say that those patents were based on philanthropic objectives, or that IBM were doing that out of altruism or for the social good - commercial profit being the statutory driving objective for all corporations. Similarly, pharmaceutical corporations' patents, Monsanto's efforts to patent the food chain, and other corporations' efforts to patent the human genome.

40hz:
@40hz:[/b] If your optimistic thinking and your faith are rewarded in the fullness of time and shown by events to have accurately predicted the future for REXX, then that would run contrary to IBM's past corporate behaviours and strategems.
-IainB (June 15, 2011, 04:28 PM)
--- End quote ---

@IainB - Um...I'm not quite sure where you're coming from - or going to - with this. But I think you're reading a little too much into my happiness.

I'm just glad something useful got released gratis and unencumbered to a group of people with the interest and expertise to do something with it. Which I think is a finer thing than to allow it to sit on a shelf and wither away like some other technologies have been allowed to by their corporate owners.

As far as IBM's motivations go, I can't honestly say what they are. But I'm also not adverse to giving credit where credit is due. Because at the end of the day, IBM didn't have to release it. But they did. And for whatever reasons.

And I'll take seeing something good go down whenever I can.

I don't think that's 'optimistic thinking' nor 'faith.' (Whatever that means. ;D)

Maybe a little less cynicism. But that's about it. :)

Onward! :Thmbsup:

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