by steve-myers » Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:11 am
Cobol compliers and run time systems have little to do with the operating system. I won't speculate on whether there will be a true 64-bit Cobol binary module, though probably created by a 32-bit compiler.
In any event, there seem to be a lot of people around that think Linux will slowly take over IBM mainframes. While I see this as a possibility, there is so much legacy stuff around that really needs something like MVS that we will always have z/OS around running as a subsystem even in an environment where Linux is the primary OS, as opposed to the current environment where z/OS (or perhaps zVM) is the primary OS and Linux is a subsystem.
As for mainframe Linux, I remember going on an interview in 2000 where the interviewer made it quite plain that mainframe Linux was where their shop was headed. They were looking to claim back the large technical support effort required to maintain many Unix type environments or an equally large number of hardware platforms. They did not make me an offer, so I have no idea what has happened there in the last 10 years.