Appeal to IBM for VisualAge productline to Linux

[Ronald van Loon <ronald@and.nl>]

Dear debian-users,

Yesterday I attended an IBM-conference about IBM's line of VisualAge
products. Great stuff - exactly something that could give Linux an extra
boost. I would like to ask everyone on this list to send IBM an e-mail
(http://www.ibm.com/Assist/ ; if you want to know more about it,
http://www.software.ibm.com/ad/visualage_c++/)

This is what I send them; I encourage you to send the same or similar; by
making our wishes known, we could win ourselves an important ally.

===
I visited your Visual Age-products tour in Amersfoort yesterday (25/3/97). I
was impressed with the ease of use of various products and was wondering
whether it would be possible to make your line of Visual-Age software
available for Linux and other free Unices.

The reasons for asking are manyfold:

- Currently, there is a big gap on the Application Development
side of Linux applications waiting to be filled; all applications
use the GNU compiler; except for one other free compiler, lcc. VisualAge
tools could fill that gap, going beyond the traditional edit-compile-debug
paradigm.

Having such a tool-suite available for Linux will strengthen the position of
Linux, making it a viable alternative to the Microsoft monopoly.

- Linux is rapidly spreading; it can now be considered a serious rival to
  other commercial UNIX-flavours, such as SCO. 

- Having VisualAge available for Linux, would allow employees of software
  companies to use IBM software at home; this would encourage the use of IBM
products at the Office.

- Linux is very popular at universities worldwide; making VisualAge
  available for Linux creates a huge potential customerbase for IBM, as well
as create free mouth to mouth advertisement.

- Porting to Linux should be relatively easy, as most of the code generating
  parts should be already there:

  - class libraries have already been ported to Solaris and AIX,
    Linux is similar to those two platforms (POSIX.1 compliant)
  - code generation for the i386-family is already there
  - Motif for Linux is available at low cost

- Several hardware and software vendors, such as Digital, have
  an active interest in Linux. IBM would not be the only major 
  player in the industry.
===
-- 
Ronald van Loon (ronald@and.nl)

"I am waiting as fast as I can! I want patience, and I want it *NOW*!"
                                                     - Bethany J. Parkhurst