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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible for a mere mortal with an equivalent amount of cash to get ahold of Z/OS to play around with (for use on the Hercules emulator or somesuch)?

I've looked around with no success, so I'm guessing not, but any clarification would be nice.

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My college roommate was the maintainer of Hercules, the z/OS emulator.

See: http://www.hercules-390.eu/hercfaq.html

2.01 Can it run z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE?

Yes. Hercules is a software implementation of z/Architecture, and so it is capable of running z/OS, z/VM, and z/VSE. Hercules also implements ESA/390 (including SIE) and so it can run OS/390, VM/ESA, and VSE/ESA, as well as older versions of these operating systems such as MVS/ESA, MVS/XA, MVS/SP, MVS/SE, VM/SP, VSE/SP, and DOS/VSE.

But (and this is a big but), these operating systems are all IBM Licensed Program Products, whose conditions of use generally restrict their usage to specific IBM machine serial numbers. So you cannot just copy these systems from work and run them on your PC, as this would almost certainly be a violation of your company's licensing agreement with IBM.

For science and education, Fair Use terms may be applied generously.

IBM's official product to run z/OS on an intel box is here:

http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ratideveandtesten...

It's just under $5k USD for a 12 month single user license:

https://www-112.ibm.com/software/howtobuy/buyingtools/paexpr...

Ouch... Guess that answers it definitively then. Shame that if someone wants to learn, they have to resort to copyright infringement...

Odd conclusion.

How so? There are no legal resources for acquiring Z/OS as a student without paying absurd (for a student) prices.

You could take a class for cheaper, but formal classes are poor substitute for interacting with the system on your own terms. (Ask any programmer)

You seem to reason that anything that is not available on your terms is fair game for piracy.

IBM can do whatever they like with their IP.

I believe the point is that if you want to play with it, your only choice is piracy, not that you must pirate it.

Since, in practice, nobody's going to pirate it either, that means there's no way to learn about it on your own. That's shutting down a very big free training mechanism for IBM, though it's probably too late to do anything about that now.

Oh thanks for pointing that out.

Karunamon didn't imply it to be fair game, he stated that it's too expensive to afford for learning for most people, which seems to be a simple fact. He also stated that it's a shame, which can mean either that it's a shame that you can't learn, or a shame that you're to infringe, and if taken to mean the latter that makes it seem like you're actually in violent agreement with him.

Seems like a good startup opportunity -- z/OS as a service. Buy the $5000 license and then rent it out to users for $10 a month. Maybe the terms don't allow it? Fuck them. Disruption, baby!

There were places around that rent time. There was also a place offering free accounts, I don't even remember the name now. There's one hell of a learning curve, makes it really hard to do anything other than poke around when you don't know the params to code in a jcl to compile a program. My first gig was mainframe cobol, the company put everyone thru a 3 month training program, that's the only reason I know anything about it.

You can try MVS, a z/OS precursor, for free:

http://www.bsp-gmbh.com/turnkey/

It is nice for fun or digital archaeology, but the last freely available version of MVS was released ca. 1978... But it is nice to get a feeling of what the system is like.

IBM used to run the mainframe challenge, in which they let you play with one. It was more a PR exercise than a competition - http://www-05.ibm.com/employment/uk/graduate-programmes/main...

It's primarily a talent identification exercise. Helps them find the next generation of z/OS developers that they could potentially hire to replace the ones who are retiring.

> Is it possible for a mere mortal with an equivalent amount of cash to get ahold of Z/OS to play around with

As a former IBMer, believe me, you don't want to. We all dreaded the "such and such doesn't work... when running on Z" defect that would roll in every now and then.

He he he, I had to install zOS a few years ago.. You think fixing a defect on zvm/zlinux is a PITA, just try installing zOS. Ugh, make me shiver thinking about it.

Apparently, just cloning a working system and applying PTF's is the common method of doing it. Otherwise you can pay IBM to build an image and install it (can't remember what they call it) but basically they generally install it the same way.

Oh man, I can only imagine. As far as fixing a defect on zLinux, that was usually something that made be breathe a slight sigh of relief. It meant I would be doing something on a somewhat sane and modern system that behaved roughly like something I'm used to.

They used to provide free Linux partitions:

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1200613

This was still available in 2006..

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