[Sussex] Moving VB to LINUX - DeLux

[Steve Dobson]

Geoff

On 14 January 2003 at 13:41 Geoff Teale wrote:
<snip> 
> It's interesting that LINUX is already gaining a lot of 
> ground in old COBOL shops because a number of COBOL engines
> exist on the platform that not only give new life to old
> code (At low cost) but provide a platform for taking
> forward those programs into the internet age.

Providing a "supported" platform for legacy code is one advantage
a system has.  Providing access to the "new way of doing things"
as well give a double whammy, and can really extend the life of 
your code.

I would even go as so far as to say that the biggest reason for
M$'s success was that: on each new release you can run all your
old stuff and this really new stuff (like Windows 3.11).
 
> Could Microsoft's dumping of it's VB codebase in order to 
> accomodate the grand .NET plan be a strong factor in driving
> businesses away from them on the desktop?   I wonder... I
> think there is a bigger barrier of FUD to break through before
> we even get people to consider the facts, but every little
> helps!

Maybe M$ is finding that the cost of supporting all their old 
development environments to expensive.  With the number of times
M$ have found  a "new and better" way of doing things they must
have a very large number of applications that they can longer
support in any fashion.  In a company like M$ anyway how would
want to work on the old fashioned stuff anyway?

Could it be that M$ has missed that long time support is important
to their clients.  That once forced to look for a replacement 
companies can make some very big changes.  Is the company ethos
incompatible with support of the legacy stuff?

My company has now got Linux on it's "coming some time" list.  Okay
so this is a Unix/Windows system already, if it runs on HP-UX, AIX,
and Solaris Linux posses no really problems.  I think the back-room
developers have some upper management it working and Linux is getting
visible enough for these guys to see it as something that need to
be in the portfolio.

What is more important is that they have also announced that the
ASP/IIS GUI interface system will be re-written in Java.  Could this
be that because one of our recent big (???must win???) sales was make
more difficult because we used Window's technology someone here has
woken up to the idea that a platform independent system allows one
to jump from one OS to another if the needs arise.

This is the theme behind the DeLUX system isn't it?

> I may well do some more research on this DeLUX thing... see 
> if I can't find out how viable it really is!

I'll look forward to this, but as I have never written any VB code
in my life (someone up there likes me) it will only be of academic
interest.

Steve