I have given this some more thought. I now think I would not mention Hercules, but not for the reasons you suspect. I would not mention it because when I was interviewing programmers I was looking for *accomplishments*, not products they had had a proximity to. So in an interview I might say
"I wrote a utility program that solves X which is a widespread problem." "I wrote a set of Rexx scripts that make Y much more tractable." "I kept my sysprog skills fresh by SMP/E-installing five products: X, Y, Z, ..." "I taught myself RACF administration hands-on." The interviewer might not follow up. But if he or she does ask "how did you do that after you left your last job three years ago?" I might answer "I have been fortunate to have had access to an MVS system all of that time." Hercules itself is fundamentally irrelevant to the job you are applying for (unless the job is in a shop that runs Hercules or is considering it). Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Grant Taylor Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 10:28 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Bringing up skills learned on z/OS Hercules in interview? On 4/9/20 5:23 PM, Bob Bridges wrote: > This is new to me. I've heard of Hercules, but I never heard that > it is considered, or that IBM would like it to be considered, an > illegal counterfeit. Is there any ethical reason for that viewpoint? > No, forget "ethical"; I guess I can make up my own mind about that > (and there'll never be a consensus on it). Is there any ~legal~ > basis for the assertion? My understanding is that the crux of the issue is the license for MVS (newer than 3.8j), OS/390, and z/OS. In short, those OSs require IBM ""hardware to legally run them. Seeing as how Hercules is decidedly /not/ IBM ""hardware, running any of the aforementioned OSs means that you are doing so illegally. At least that's my layman's understanding. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I say ""hardware, because IBM does have zPDT / RDz that is — as I understand it — a purely software solution with the caveat of a hardware license dongle. But the mainframe hardware is completely emulated in software. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
