iSeries Programmers Irate Concerning CGIDEV2 Limbo

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

A few months ago, our Four Hundred Guru newsletter touched off firestorm when Brian Kelly, an iSeries-WebSphere expert, suggested that IBM has to come up with a way to do native Web browsing support in RPG-DB2/400 applications. As part of the ensuing flamefest in the newsletter and on our IT Jungle Forums, people pointed out that a quasi-open source program called CGIDEV2 provided much of the functionality that Kelly and others were seeking.

Now that one of the main forces behind CGIDEV2, Giovanni Perotti of IBM Italy, has retired from Big Blue, the tool and the IBM site that services it has fallen into limbo. And judging by the flamemail I got about it last week, I would say that there are a considerable number of people who love CGIDEV2 and who are very unhappy with the way IBM has been treating it.

As I explained a month ago when Perotti retired, Mel Rothman of IBM's Rochester Labs created the CGIDEV2 tools for bringing OS/400 applications to the Web. Perotti was instrumental in launching the Easy400 Web site to show companies how to deploy this software and to provide the open source version of the CGIDEV2 code to let them contribute to the future development of the tools. Rothman has been tweaking the code and an Easy400 community has developed, but Perotti's retirement has thrown the tool into limbo and IBM is not resolving the issue.

When Perotti retired, he said he would continue to support Easy400 users free of charge and told everyone that the Easy400 Web site would continue even in his absence. The Yahoo user group and forum for the tool is still active, and last week was quite active. But he does not control the CGIDEV2 code, and neither does Rothman. While IBM has allowed CGIDEV2 to be distributed as source code free of charge through and Easy400, many of us in the OS/400 community believe that Big Blue should go the next step and put CGIDEV2 and Easy400 out there in the open source community in a formal way and assign the copyrights to the code to that community. And, as IBM does with other open source projects, it should dedicate personnel and resources to the open source project. (Rothman has been retired from IBM since 2002, and has made enhancements to it gratis since that time.)

According to an email I received from Perotti through the Yahoo group, IBM seems to be resistant to the idea of letting go of CGIDEV2:

From:  "Giovanni B. Perotti"
Date: Jul 18, 2005 07:09 PM 
Reply to:  Easy400Group@yahoogroups.com  
To:  Easy400Group@yahoogroups.com  
Subject:  [Easy400Group] The future of the IBM Easy400 site, 
after Giovanni's retirement  

As most people know, I founded the IBM Easy400 site (currently 
www-922.ibm.com) in 1997 and I used to be the owner until I left 
IBM at the end of June 2005. 

Before leaving, I did ask IBM permission to access the site in 
order to maintain it. That permission was negated. There is no 
person left in IBM w-wide for maintaining that site. So you have 
better considering that IBM site, from now on, as an unattended 
satellite lost in space.

A few days ago I launched a new site, http://www.easy400.net, 
very similar to the IBM one, except that it does not carry the 
IBM name, and it will be maintained. I invite you all to logon 
on this new site.

In this situation, the great software from Mel Rothman is in a 
special status. Mel Rothman originally developed that code when he 
used to work for the IBM CTC Rochester. I have asked Mel's former 
IBM manager Richard Ross to find out a way (Open Source?) to have 
the CGIDEV2 code made available from a non-IBM site. 

So far, consulting with IBM lawyers has resulted to nothing, in the 
sense that IBM would retain its Copyright on CGIDEV2 - even if no 
one in IBM is any longer supporting it - rather than giving the 
code away. 

The rationale of this is not clear to me, and I suspect it is not 
to any reasonable person aiming at iSeries customer satisfaction. 

Consequences however are that CGIDEV2 code cannot be downloaded 
from the new site (on a download request, the new site links to the 
IBM one). Even more important is that, if the day comes when Mel 
has a new fix or feature to make available, that cannot any longer 
be distributed. 

This is why I invite everyone, who took or is taking advantage out 
of that great CGIDEV2 code, to start complaining and asking for "Open 
Source CGIDEV2" to the IBM w-wide iSeries Marketing.
 
This can be done in two ways: 

1-Sending appropriate letters to the IBM w-wide iSeries Marketing 
manager (a few hundred e-mails may do the job) 

2-Raising the appropriate issue in the next COMMON (U.S. and Europe) 
meetings. 

As usual, it takes a popular movement to have IBM revising its position. 

Good luck! 

Giovanni

The Easy400 community was quick to fall in behind Perotti and definitely wants to see this CGIDEV2 tool appear as a true, independent, open source project. Some have even suggested that Perotti can post updates to the software on the site even though IBM's lawyers have said otherwise. RPG luminary Jon Paris, of Partner400, piped in with this email:

From: "Jon Paris"
To: Easy400Group@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 1:45 AM
Subject: RE: [Easy400Group] The future of the IBM Easy400 site, after 
Giovanni's retirement

Bad news Giovanni - I will be writing as I'm sure will others.

One question:

Consequences however are that CGIDEV2 code cannot be downloaded from 
the new site (on a download request, the new site links to the 
IBM one).

IBM has always allowed modifications to the source, and allows sale 
and source distribution for products derived from it.  So why can't 
a "derived" version be available for download.  I don't recall ever 
seeing anything on the web site and the copyright notice in the 
prototypes doesn't seem to cover this at all.

Just wondering.
Jon Paris
Partner400

This was Perotti's response, which shows he needs some help from the OS/400 community and IBM if the goal of open sourcing CGIDEV2 is to be accomplished:

To: Easy400Group@yahoogroups.com 
From: "Giovanni B. Perotti" 
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 10:26:03 +0200 
Subject: Re: [Easy400Group] The future of the IBM Easy400 site, 
after Giovanni's retirement

To Jon Paris and other.

Technically speaking, I have no problems in setting up a CGIDEV2.ZIP 
file on my new site http://www.easy400.net .

What I do not want, is a case "IBM against Giovanni" in the court. 
Though declining, IBM is still a giant company. I'm a single individual 
with about no revenue, can't afford the best lawyers.

The IBM lawyer, consulted by Richard Ross, was also upset knowing that 
I did made available Mel's fixes and new features to CGIDEV2 after that 
Mel left IBM. "By doing so" - she wrote - "you have exposed IBM "! 
She of course does not realize that her words would expose IBM to laughs.

About the "Open Source" pages currently displayed on the IBM Easy400 
site. I wrote those pages BEFORE leaving IBM. That allowed me to 
redistribute all  the other deliverables (e.g. MMAIL) which are NOT 
protected by COPYRIGHT sentences.

To be on the safe side, I believe that IBM should decide to remove the 
COPYRIGHT statements from CGIDEV2. When that is done, CGIDEV2 could be 
redistributed (and maintained) from my new site http://www.easy400.net.

This is a mandatory step towards Open Source status.

Again, advocating Open Source for CGIDEV2 is - in my opinion - the 
right way to go. That may be obtained by

1- Requesting it (by hundred e-mails) to Peter Bingaman, 
bingaman@us.ibm.com, VP IBM iSeries W-Wide Marketing (copy Richard Ross, 
rbross@us.ibm.com, IBM CTC Rochester )

2- Raising appropriate issues at U.S. and Europe COMMON meetings

Giovanni

Perotti has started a signature drive on the Easy400.net site where you can let IBM know how you feel, but appealing directly to IBM or through IT Jungle to IBM is also a good idea. Our Four Hundred Gurus are certainly not pleased with IBM's behavior on this one. A few of them are just starting to use the tools, and having seen how powerful and simple they are, they are keen on seeing if they can use them in production environments. They want IBM to improve them and support them, or let the Easy400 community improve them and support them. It really is that simple.

I think that IBM should go one step further than this, or maybe some intrepid iSeries development tool provider should. Any way you want to cut it, Easy400 is a threat--perhaps minor, perhaps not--to commercialized development tools. That is the nature of open source. Any free tool that does 50 percent of what you want is going to impact the sales of any commercial tool that does 100 percent or more of what you want. I am not trying to suggest that there is no place for commercial tools--IT Jungle uses a mix of open and closed source programs--but rather that IBM and its development tool partners might wish for CGIDEV2 to die a quiet death.

As I see it, there are three courses of action for CGIDEV2 at this point (there are undoubtedly others). First, IBM sees it Perotti's way and takes CGIDEV2 open source, creates a foundation for it, assigns it the copyrights to the code to that foundation, and fosters an open source community for the tool. This Easy400 community could maintain and extend a truly open source version of the tool and even pull the standard maneuver for popular open source tools and offer a commercialized version with paid annual support contracts. This is how Linux, MySQL, JBoss, and other open source programs went commercial. IBM Global Services could offer the support through the Rochester labs as well. I think none of this is very likely, because the iSeries Developer's Roadmap is already full of great tools that IBM and its partners want to sell for money.

Another thing that could happen is that an existing independent software vendor, either in the OS/400 market or trying to break into the market, could sweep in and pay IBM to acquire CGIDEV2. A third party buyer doesn't have to be an ISV, either. It could be a reseller partner looking for a value-add or a services company looking to tap into the vast AS/400 and iSeries installed base. I can imagine this happening, but I have no idea what IBM would sell CGIDEV2 for. The price of something is what someone will let go of it for, and considering that IBM's business partners are probably not keen on CGIDEV2, the cost to the OS/400 ecosystem for CGIDEV2 (in terms of the money that people would have spent on development tools) is a lot higher than the time value of the money and resources that went into making it over the past nine years. I also think, for these reasons, that it is unlikely that IBM will sell it.

That leaves Plan C. Last week, I acquired three domain names: easier400.net, easier400.org, and easier400.com. It took one programmer (Rothman) just about nine years to get CGIDEV2 to where it is today. So making an open source alternative to CGIDEV2 would be a pretty serious undertaking. And because IBM owns the copyrights to CGIDEV2, whatever tool an open source community creates cannot, by definition, be based on even one line of the code used in the CGIDEV2 toolset, or IBM's lawyers will descend upon that community. So, by definition, whatever open source alternative a new community would come up with would almost certainly have to be incompatible with CGIDEV2. You could call such a program Easier400 because I think that is funny (which is why I chose those domain names), but this is serious business. Even five person-years of programming time spread out across a dozen community developers is worth at least $500,000 and probably closer to $750,000. That's a lot of time to ask for gratis. A larger community cannot pitch in on the main architecting or coding of this so-called Easier400, just like the main open source projects have only a few key coders and a lot of beta testers suggesting tweaks and finding holes. I certainly have no skills to create such a tool, and maybe you don't either. I know people who do, though, and so do you. And I know others who have spare OS/400 server capacity and network bandwidth to host an Easier400 site.

What I also know is that if the OS/400 community really wants such a tool, there is nothing that anyone or any company can do to stop them--provided you don't go anywhere near the CGIDEV2 code. If that happens, game over, and someone is sued.

So, it is up to you, the OS/400 community. If you want to create your own Web-enabling tool for the iSeries, I'll donate the domains. Someone has to lead it, and they have to know about the guts of OS/400, RPG, and Web programming like Rothman did. If you don't want to do it, I'm out a few bucks. No big deal. I'll just have to brew my own beer for a few months instead of buying it . . . I like open source beer better anyway.

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