Re: [open-cobol-list] Another open source cobol

[Joseph James Frantz (Aoirthoir)]

Yes. The Add 1 to Cobol team has been discussing this post. I responded to it
on the forum.

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:31 AM, David Essex <address@hidden> wrote:

The following was posted on the OC forum by 'The COBOL-IT Staff'.

cobolit wrote:

> Given the more or less accurate information being spread
> out on the net about us, we would like to clarify COBOL-IT's
> position regarding a number of matters.
>
> A bit more than one year ago, after that MF acquired Acucorp,
> we all faced the same evidence, namely, that the market needed
> another professional source for COBOL Compiler, provided by a
> company that treats their customer well and provide them with
> decent service and support. A company focused on delivering
> solutions and services to professional organizations for
> which security, reliability, confidentiality are vital.
>
> We then decided to promote a separate compiler suite, and
> we soon opted for OpenCOBOL as the base of our offering
> because of its intrinsic virtues: quality, simplicity,
> and portability.
>
> At that time, we visited Roger While to see whether a
> form of closer cooperation was possible. However, it
> turned out that our commercial goals were too different
> from his, and decided to branch out. Please appreciate
> that despite such differences of appreciation, we are
> in very good term with Roger, who has always been
> kept up to date with our intentions and plans.
>
> We then incorporated COBOL-IT in September 2008.
>
> Our goal is to provide the market with a reliable and
> full-featured COBOL compiler that comes with professional
> support. Please do not misrepresent what we say.
> We are not saying that the OpenCOBOL compiler as maintained
> by Roger is not stable or not reliable. Our point is that
> this compiler misses a number of serious features required
> by the large corporations we're talking to, and that in
> order to address this market efficiently, support based
> on an open forum and goodwill just is not enough.
>
> Our model is not based on letting the burden of configuring
> and compiling the compiler to the end user, who often
> does not have the skills to do so. That's why we provide
> precompiled, ready to use binaries, even though our
> source code is available.
>
> We separate the public from the customer version of
> the compiler. The public version is freely available
> on our web site, while the customer version, with a
> number of extended features, is reserved to our customers
> only. We strictly respect the terms and the spirit of
> the GPL license since the source of the public version
> are sent on simple email request and our customers
> always receive the sources code together with the
> compiled binary.
>
>
> COBOL-IT has improved on the original OpenCOBOL compiler
> in a number of areas:
>
> - It is certified - or in the process of being certified
>   with third party tools, including Pro*COBOL from Oracle,
>   Tuxedo, Syncsort, DB2, XFrame, UniKix, MySql, etc.
> - We offer a SQL precompiler to target MySQL, PostgreSQL
>   and ODBC.
> - Windows API calls (STDCALL) are now supported
> - Mircosoft's Visual C compilers are supported as backend
> - A number of features have been introduced to improve the
>   source level compatibility with MF
> - We have thoroughly debugged and now support our version
>   of VBISAM
> - We developed an Eclipse-based plug-in, to be released
>   in the coming weeks
> - We provide a COBOL source-level debugger
> - We provide a profiler
> - We implemented a number of optimizations to make the
>   generated code closer in terms of performance to the
>   other players in the market
> - We provide an external Sort module tool
>
>
> We hope this explains how, while COBOL-IT is based on
> OpenCOBOL, we believe that referring to it as
> 'Open COBOL with a new name' or a Clone of OpenCOBOL or
> as a 'non friendly fork' is not accurate.
>
> While it is rooted in OpenCOBOL, COBOL-IT is a separate
> product with separate aims and separate ambitions, to
> be used by separate sets of people. Our version diverges
> from the original OpenCOBOL source a little bit more
> every day, even if we keep an attentive eye on Roger's
> excellent work, and we understand he does the same
> with ours.
>
> I hope that these explanations will help the OpenCOBOL
> community to understand where we stand.
>
> The COBOL-IT Staff

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-- 
Joseph James Frantz
(Aoirthoir)

http://www.add1tocobol.com
Regular add1tocobol meetings:
Where: FREENODE IRC
Channel: #add1tocobol
Access from the web: http://www.add1tocobol.com/chat.php
Date: Sundays
Time: 9:00am Eastern

::::::::NOTE IMPORTANT::::::::::
There has been some confusion as to the time. I believe this is because the United States uses Daylight Savings Time. On top of this the Government recently extended the dates that EDT (eastern daylight time) would run. So to be sure that you make it at 9am Eastern, I have this link:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=179

That shows the time in New York City at the moment of viewing. It also explains the current UTC offset for the Eastern Zone in the United States. Simply compare the current time that site states, with your current time and you will know how far off we are from you.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

We're there all of the time, even when we do not have a meeting. Stop on by for Open Cobol Support and chat.