Inertia, regulators, and company having lots of money to the point they don't care (banks...) explains mainframes. They do the job well, so why bother replacing them if you don't care that they cost more.
It's been tried many times before, and it never works out. Whether it's system complexity that can't be replicated, or woes from floating point imprecision, it's a hell of a lot harder than people who haven't dug into it think.
Seems to work just fine for Indian banks and the Income Tax Department.
Infosys marketing copy for the GST portal talks about leveraging opensource building blocks: https://www.infosys.com/services/application-modernization/c...
My Google-fu is failing me, you might have better luck searching for specifics about Finacle.
Can you link some specific example? That may be an interesting read.
> However, z/OS also implements 64-bit Java, C, C++, and UNIX (Single UNIX Specification) APIs and applications through UNIX System Services – The Open Group certifies z/OS as a compliant UNIX operating system – with UNIX/Linux-style hierarchical HFS[NB 3][NB 4] and zFS file systems. These compatibilities make z/OS capable of running a range of commercial and open source software.[3] z/OS can communicate directly via TCP/IP, including IPv6,[4] and includes standard HTTP servers (one from Lotus, the other Apache-derived) along with other common services such as SSH, FTP, NFS, and CIFS/SMB.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/OS
Although I like the argument that having an OS that does not require use of C is an interesting feature. Then it's really about the quality software platform, more than about the magic hardware.
You can run an official IBM emulator for only $5,980.00 per user per year[0]. I've never done it, but this[1] guy did.
Or you can run the open source Hercules[2] emulator, but this is limited to Linux, or older IBM operating systems.
[0] https://www.ibm.com/products/z-development-test-environment
[1] https://colinpaice.blog/2020/06/29/getting-z-os-installed-on...