Where to download free Fujitsu COBOL compiler
in [Cobol]
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From: Fim on 4 Nov 2009 06:08 On 4 Nov, 07:21, Rene_Surop <infodynamics...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > No, I don´t want to use .net. > > A search of this newsgroup for free Fujitsu COBOL gives no result of > > value. > > > /Fim W. > > MF NetExpress product can be downloaded from;http://www.microfocus.com/Resources/Communities/Academic/shop/index.asp Thanks, but it is not for commercial use. /Fim W
From: William M. Klein on 4 Nov 2009 12:35 The Fujitsu V3 compiler was NOT for commercial use either. Well, actually, when it was first provided (in 1996 or so) it could be used for anything, but for the last decade or so it was explicitly posted with "restrictions" saying that it was not for commercial use. Having said that, I couldn't find it anymore on the web either. I am watching this thread to see if anyone can still find it. The last (a while ago) page that I had was: http://www.adtools.com/download/v3starter/index.htm but that now gets a "page not found" message. "Fim" <fim.wastberg(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:b005267a-e67d-4b10-bbdd-af7ef8336419(a)d5g2000yqm.googlegroups.com... On 4 Nov, 07:21, Rene_Surop <infodynamics...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > No, I don�t want to use .net. > > A search of this newsgroup for free Fujitsu COBOL gives no result of > > value. > > > /Fim W. > > MF NetExpress product can be downloaded > from;http://www.microfocus.com/Resources/Communities/Academic/shop/index.asp Thanks, but it is not for commercial use. /Fim W
From: Pete Dashwood on 4 Nov 2009 19:59 William M. Klein wrote: > The Fujitsu V3 compiler was NOT for commercial use either. > > Well, actually, when it was first provided (in 1996 or so) it could > be used for anything, but for the last decade or so it was explicitly > posted with "restrictions" saying that it was not for commercial use. I received it (for free...) in 1996, as you noted. I developed a commercial system with it using PowerCOBOL and it is running to this day. (This, as Bill noted, did not violate the license at the time.) Originally, Fujitsu marketed it into the vacuum created by the withdrawal of support for Micro Focus Visoc, and I was one of the Micro Focus customers who changed to Fujitsu at that time. I found the product to be excellent and took out maintenance and updated as new versions became available. By the time version 5 arrived, it was a pretty good development environment, although the IDE has always been "primitive" compared to Eclipse or Visual Studio. It was in version 6 that everything turned to custard. Fujitsu (USA), later to become Alchemy, decided that piracy was a major concern (I remain unconvinced to this day; I was talking to a number of Fujitsu customers and I never met one who was making illegal copies for supply to someone else; for the most part, their user base was honest COBOL developers for whom not having a backup put their businesses at risk...) and implemented an insane system of registration using Casper on a remote server. Although this was supposed to be helpful for users, inasmuch as the system would allow you 30 days to download and use a copy of the software if your main implementation went down, the process involved was really unwieldy. For users outside the continental USA where time differences matter and you can't just dial an 0800 number, it was frightening. What if the Casper server was down or wouldn't recognise your registration? Added to that, the procedure for transferring a licence to a different machine was just plain silly. (It required a floppy disk...how long since you saw one of those...? :-)) There was unrest amongst the troops and I recall a heated debate in this forum about the the new licensing. Fujitsu remained unmoved and impervious and some of us, who actually loved the products and had been fiercely loyal to them, started thinking about alternatives. (The ironic thng is that, despite all the complicated rigmarole with Casper Registration, the whole process is NOT secure, and copies of the software can be easily made by determined and informed people. Alchemy should really revise this registration system and make it fair and reasonable for rveryone concerned. Modern technology and software innovation has overtaken the Neanderthal mindset that dreamed up Casper.) For me, nails started being hammered into the coffin when they revamped their support and fired guys like Lee Unterreiner (who was one of the most outstanding support people I have ever seen anywhere), as a cost-cutting measure. The final nails went in when I found myself on a customer site to whom I had recommended the products, and there were undocumented errors in the software (PowerCOBOL), incoherent dialogs produced in pidgin English, and the support was imbecilic. The process of getting support was pathetic and unnecessarily convoluted, and when you finally got attended to, the person was incompetent. They finally offered to go back to Japan on it and it would take three weeks. As the client system needed to be operational in 5 days, this was unacceptable. I worked day and night with the local team, under extreme pressure, and we rewrote thousands of lines of PowerCOBOL into NetCOBOL COM components and managed to achieve the target date, but I NEVER want to be in that situation again. I felt betrayed and embarrassed because I had recommended them. As a result, I cancelled my maintenance. (The actual support was a joke and, by then I think we were on version 6 and the upgrades weren't implementing anything noticeable... it was like they ran out of ideas.) The interment came when I tried to buy their COBOL for .NET compiler and was treated with rudeness and shabbiness. The attitude was"You're a small time COBOL developer so you're not going anywhere. You have no options and we'll deal with you when it suits us, on terms that suit us." I don't know many people for whom that would sit well, and for me it just meant an immediate free download of C# and Visual Studio. It also indirectly led to the development of the PRIMA Migration Toolset which is designed to help others get out from under, just as I did. Every cloud has a silver lining ... :-). I was hopeful that when Alchemy was announced it would be a new start and things would be better. Instead, I have heard from several sources that maintenance is still dreadful (OK, hearsay is not evidence...) and now we find that all free and Academic versions of the compiler have been pulled. (My search was fuitless just like everybody else's and the Downloads section of the Alchemy site requires prior registration (perfectly fair and reasonable), but there is no indication that even if you do this you can get the free V3 compiler. To be fair, the current Alchemy focus is on COBOL for .NET and the tools designed to entice mainframe sites onto .NET, (like the appallingly named, but apparently very useful, NEO-KICKS :-)) so I guess it is understandable that they don't want to be supporting or dealing with enquiries on obsolete versions of the NetCOBOL compiler. Nevertheless, they could have left version 3 with a disclaimer and let people use it for experimentation or even just having a look at COBOL. Maybe they figure the Open Source COBOL movement has that covered... It looks to me like a COBOL company that has no commitment to COBOL (except maybe .NET COBOL) If that is the case, then long term, I think the strategy is flawed. Once people move to a platform like .NET (no matter which vehicle they arrive in), they very soon start to realise the advantages of this approach. Before too long it becomes apparent that COBOL and COBOL approaches are not the best way to do things in this environment (even though you CAN use it), and they simply move to more facile .NET languages. It is also important to remember that neither Fujitsu nor Alchemy are OBLIGED to offer a free compiler. Fujitsu did it to try and penetrate a market that was dominated by Micro Focus. There was never any guarantee that they would CONTINUE doing it. Micro Focus offer a free version because they are a company committed to COBOL and they realise that by making access to COBOL easy, it is good for the long term future of their business. I admire them, but I don't think that is where the future is. I guess time will tell... In the meantime there is a lesson here for all of us: If a vendor offers something free it is probably worth getting hold of it. Certainly, it is unlikely to leave you any worse off... Don't just assume it will always be there... (I see this in the same way as the free C#/VB.Net/C++/VS express downloads from Microsoft... get it while you can; you don't know how long it will be available for... a change of management policy or an analyst decides the marketing objective has been achieved and it could be pulled overnight...) > > Having said that, I couldn't find it anymore on the web either. I am > watching this thread to see if anyone can still find it. > I located a number of links to it but none of them worked. Alchemy is not showing it or ANY free download that I could find... Pete. -- "I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
From: Rene_Surop on 4 Nov 2009 20:01 > The Fujitsu V3 compiler was NOT for commercial use either. > > Well, actually, when it was first provided (in 1996 or so) it could be used > for anything, but for the last decade or so it was explicitly posted with > "restrictions" saying that it was not for commercial use. > Pete used to code in Fujitsu Cobol. Probably he could have an information about it.
From: Rene_Surop on 4 Nov 2009 20:19
> > (I see this in the same way as the free C#/VB.Net/C++/VS express downloads > from Microsoft... get it while you can; you don't know how long it will be > available for... a change of management policy or an analyst decides the > marketing objective has been achieved and it could be pulled overnight...) > Had an idea Pete. It is a long shot though, if in any case a Cobol programmer would adopt Microsoft C#/VS, had to code on this platform... BUT instead of completing on running pure C#, the C# code invokes a Cobol program for the logic/data side. Could it be done? It could be silly I guess but most of my codes are in Cobol COM which can be invoked using C#, and I do not want to change them. Using a Cobol COM on web application requires mastering HTML/CSS coding... while MS .NET framework could do it in a GUI on web apps. |