Well, just my $0.02 but...

(1) The questions may either be trolls by unfriendly types like acertain PITA I
am sure everyone can name for themselves, or
they may be made by someone who is pirating the software and a lot ofpeople just
do not want to morally aid, or - and this is the mostlikely situation - they are
innocent questions by people who are eitherlegal or unaware of the legal issues.
This last person should beencouraged in my opinion, though they need to 'get
legal.' This is, ofcourse, something that IBM has made extraordinarily difficult
for thosewho have little extra cash to spend on a 'hobby', are not
softwareprofessionals, or for whatever reason, are unable or wunwilling tospend
the $10K+ to get a legal copy of Flex, z/OS, and a laptop. Don't laugh, that
$10K is a surprising high barrier for an awful lot ofpeople to reach. In any
case, I reiterate that this last type of personshould be encouraged, and gently
guided to legal stuff that is, in mostcases, almost as much fun as the latest
and greatest. In some cases, itis a lot more fun. :)

(2) Operating systems to run on Hercules are without a doubt, the
mosttroublesome and trying aspect of any potentional Herculean. Yeah, Hercitself
is utterly cool, but when you get right down to it, so arehundreds of thousands
of other UNIX applications written in C. What makes Herc unique is that it
brings a computer most people willnever have the opportunity to touch, see, or
work with right smack downon a $300 PC that *anyone* can play with.

And it isn't worth the time to compile unless you *run* something onit. The
standalone sets and starter sets out are great, but honestly,
the users want to see a screen they can do something with! VMwithout xEdit is
just DOS; MVS without ISPF (or RPF!) are rather -ummm- dull? A computer you
cannot compile and run Hello World on israther - like an ancient SCO box? (i.e.
Unwanted!)

All this is to say that I think OS questions are the heart and soul ofmost Herc
users - and we should again be encouraging about 'em. Yes,there should be limits
- "How do I download a pirated copy of z/OS"would clearly be beyond that limit.
On the other hand, I asked a fewmonths ago for some help moving data on z/VM
tapes to Hercules. Yeah, Ihave a real honest to goodness z800 here, and the
whole process wastotally legal - the data was from Linux and was going to Linux.
Ibelieve I still took some heat, although in e-mail not in the forum.

So I guess I am wondering why you seem to be so frustrated or hostileabout this.
There is, I am sure, a lot I do not know. On the otherhand, IBM has never came
out with anything I have seen that opposedHercules - and an awful lot of IBMers
user Herc every day. I am sureIBM would prefer to have control of Herc in some
way, and to make moneyoff it. But who wouldn't?

We will see IBM OS licensing when IBM and the HErc creators gettogether and
agree on how they will make money and benefit from Herc.Until then, I still see
no hard in encouraging interest and generatingloyal Herc users by answers OS
questions and such.

Again, just my opinion here - not speaking for anyone but myself.

-Paul




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]