Updated November 12, 2020: (1) The Awesome Free Stuff for Your Mainframe Webcast replay is now available if you'd like even more information about "freebies." (2) Added a couple IMS-related freebies to the list. Updated July 21, 2021: (3) Added Go on z/OS.FREE! We all love that word, especially when it’s true. It’s true: there’s an amazing amount of wonderful, free stuff for the IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE platforms that will probably surprise you. OK, admittedly nothing in life is
truly free. You have to spend a little bit of effort implementing and exploiting this wonderful free stuff, and presumably your time isn’t always free. Lawyers like to say “no additional charge.” I’m not a lawyer.
I published two previous editions of this list, in
2013 and
2016. This 2020 edition is bigger and includes all the freebies from the prior lists that are still relevant. This list is by no means exhaustive. If I missed your favorite freebie, or you have some other update to report, please add a comment or otherwise let me know.
Free Access to Mainframes
Free Mainframe Operating Systems
- The open source QEMU emulator is able to run Linux distributions for IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE servers on your PC, Macintosh, or even Raspberry Pi, as examples. Many Linux distributions are available including the major "enterprise" distributions (Canonical's Ubuntu Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), Sine Nomine's ClefOS (which tracks CentOS, and with the EPEL packages), Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS, Alpine, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, and openSUSE. Optional support and maintenance contracts, including patch/update subscriptions, are available for many of these distributions.
- The classic MUSIC/SP operating system is available for download along with a PC-based, limited emulator to run it. In principle you could transfer MUSIC/SP to an IBM mainframe and run it there (probably under z/VM), but take a look at the license terms first to make sure you have (or, if necessary, obtain) permission. However, even if you have permission, MUSIC/SP probably won't start on IBM z14 and later model machines since they do not offer ESA mode IPL.
- IBM's Customized Offerings Driver (5751-COD) is a miniature version of z/OS that can help support new z/OS installations and various other maintenance tasks. The Customized Offerings Driver is available at no additional charge to all z/OS licensees.
Free Container Images
- There are thousands of free Docker/Open Container Initiative (OCI) container images available from several repositories including DockerHub and Red Hat's catalog. These container images are compatible with Docker and OCI runtimes for IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE servers including Docker Community Edition, Podman, Kubernetes, OpenShift Container Platform, IBM Hyper Protect Virtual Servers, and the z/OS Container Extensions.
Whole System-Related Freebies
- IBM HMC Mobile is a free tool available for iOS, iPadOS, and Android that provides authorized IBM Z and LinuxONE server administrators with secure access to Hardware Management Console/Hardware Management Appliance functions, such as starting and stopping logical partitions.
- IBM and other open source contributors have released Ansible modules to automate Dynamic Partition Manager tasks on IBM Z and LinuxONE servers. You can use these free modules "as-is" as long as you like. IBM includes and supports these modules as a small part of the chargeable IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center product.
- ZZSA is a useful tool that can start up on a "bare" LPAR on its own (or as a z/VM guest). You can display and edit data on disk, and it's helpful to diagnose IPL problems.
- IBM I/O Exerciser ("ESAIO") can help verify an I/O configuration without starting an operating system and running a full production workload. ESAIO can run on a "bare" LPAR, as a z/VM guest, or on z/OS.
Freebies Primarily for z/OS
- There are many fine collections of free software for z/OS:
- Be sure to visit The Open Mainframe Project's list of open source software projects, including Zowe.
- The CBT Tape software collection started in 1975 and keeps getting bigger and better. This collection includes hundreds of tools, utilities, code samples, and "lite" versions of commercial products such as MXI.
- Lionel Dyck is a prolific, well known author of excellent z/OS freeware (and commercial software too) such as XMITIP, a tool to send formatted e-mail messages from z/OS. He's also actively involved in the Zigi project, the ISPF interface to Git.
- IBM's GitHub repository for z/OS is chock full of goodies including z/OSMF workflows and RACF tools. Other interesting repositories include IBM's GitHub area for CICS featuring gems such as cics-event-consumer.
- Rocket Software maintains a large library of popular open source software for z/OS. Optional paid support is available. (Hint: Click/tap on the "Open Source Tools" link for more.)
- IBM provides myriad free "SupportPac" add-ons for CICS Transaction Server and MQ.
- IBM also offers some freebies for IMS such as the IBM Tools Base (IBM Program No. 5655-V93) and IBM Common Services Library (5655-CSL). The IBM Tools Base includes IMS Hardware Data Compression Extended and a batch utility to report and delete IMS Resource Manager resource structures. The IBM Common Services Library includes a batch scrub utility to remove sensitive data from IMS logs. These freebies are available through IBM ShopZ.
- Some of IBM's free z/OS-related downloads, such as the Encryption Facility for z/OS Client, are available via IBM Resource Link.
- Red Hat now offers a Community Ansible Collection for z/OS. (The Supported Ansible Collection for z/OS is also available with an Ansible subscription.)
- Other collections include David Alcock's Planet MVS, the late Gilbert Saint-Flour's great works, Mark Zelden's MVS Utilities, ColeSoft's Utilities, Dignus's free programs, Rizzuto IT's tools, Cardett Associates (a couple free Db2 tools), Nigel Pentland's RACF utilities, Longpela Expertise's free tools and sample code, and Taltyman's downloads (including an ISPF version of the Yahtzee game).
- aux2svg is a utility that creates a graphical representation of a CICS Transaction Server auxiliary trace printout.
- IBM's Db2 Accessories Suite (IBM Program No. 5697-Q05) includes Db2 Text Search, support for spatial datatypes, and some JSON-related features for Db2 for z/OS. If you have a Db2 for z/OS license the Db2 Accessories Suite is available at no additional charge via IBM ShopZ.
- Dovetailed Technologies has their popular Co:Z Co-Processing Toolkit that can invoke "external" functions to/from z/OS, including functions running in the z/OS Container Extensions (zCX) and elsewhere. The Toolkit is free, and optional paid support is available.
- While IBM's VS Pascal compiler and library (IBM Program No. 5668-767) are still available and supported, they're not free. However, the New Stanford Pascal Compiler is, and versions are available for some other platforms including z/VM.
- If you'd like to get a well formatted HTML representation of your z/OS Workload Manager policy, the Pivotor WLM to HTML online tool can help.
- TASID is an ISPF application that provides some basic but quite important details on z/OS system activity.
- Do you use the open source Xymon server and network monitoring tool? Savannah offers Xymon clients for z/OS, z/VM, and z/VSE.
- The z/OS Communications Server Network Utility Assistant provides an ISPF front-end to the NETSTAT command, useful for basic network troubleshooting.
- The IBM Z Open Automation Utilities (IBM Program No. 5698-PA1) are available at no additional charge to z/OS licensees via IBM ShopZ. (IBM offers optional paid Subscription & Support.) They provide a rich set of additional z/OS UNIX System Services commands to interact with various traditional z/OS resources interactively or via automation scripts.
- If you need the IBM SDK for Java for z/OS, Linux on IBM Z/LinuxONE, or other platforms, you can find it here. If you need a light and fast open source Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) server (perhaps to include as part of your software product), try Open Liberty. Open Liberty runs on z/OS, Linux on IBM Z/LinuxONE, and other platforms. It's a great choice if, for example, you need to provide a "backstop" JEE runtime just in case you need to run on a system that doesn't already have CICS Liberty or WebSphere Application Server.
- IBM offers a wide variety of other z/OS-oriented tools for developers, and many of them are free. You can find a fairly complete list here. Examples include the Eclipse-based Explorer for z/OS with its various plug-ins, the IBM SDK for Node.js (JavaScript), IBM Record Generator for Java, the z/OS Provisioning Toolkit, IBM Wazi for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces, and the IBM Z Open Editor extension for Microsoft's Visual Studio Code.
- IBM is officially supporting the Python programming language on z/OS via the free IBM Open Enterprise Python for z/OS software product, IBM Program No. 5655-PYT, available at no additional charge to z/OS licensees via IBM ShopZ. IBM also offers optional paid Subscription & Support.
- IBM is also officially supporting the Go programming language (Golang) on z/OS via the free IBM Open Enterprise SDK for Go on z/OS software product, IBM Program No. 5655-GOZ. IBM also offers optional paid Subscription & Support.
- The base z/OS operating system includes the XML System Services, but occasionally the XML Toolkit for z/OS (IBM Program No. 5655-J51) is still useful and available at no additional charge via IBM ShopZ. XML Toolkit Version 1.11 was introduced in early 2020.
- zospm is a currently experimental software package manager for z/OS.
Freebies Primarily for Linux on IBM Z/LinuxONEIn addition to the Linux-related software listed above, you can find literally thousands of free software packages, many with Linux distributor support available. IBM maintains
a "validated" list of open source software, and IBM is also quite active
on GitHub. However, IBM's lists are by no means complete, and every day there's more new software. Here are a few that I find particularly interesting:
- IBM has released a Fully Homomorphic Encryption toolkit for Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE. FHE allows you to perform certain types of data analysis on encrypted data, assuring that some meaningful insights are obtainable without compromising data privacy. Fascinating!
- Most Linux distributions come with kernel and s390-tools support for the IBM Crypto Express Hardware Security Modules (HSMs). However, if you're working with these HSMs you'll probably also want to grab IBM's cryptographic software packages for Linux.
- Zoom and Zeuss are free tools that provide cloud-oriented provisioning for Linux on Z/LinuxONE and z/VM environments.
Freebies Primarily for z/VM, z/VSE, and z/TPF
"Trialware"IBM and many other companies often have free trials and "developer editions" of their software products for mainframes. (And if they don't advertise them, you can still ask.) Here are just a few specific examples:
- Although ServicePilot has removed the free, "light" version of its network monitoring tool for z/OS from its Web site, reportedly if you contact the company they'll still provide access to the free version (and hope you'll upgrade to the paid version).
- HelpSystems offers a free trial of their Powertech Antivirus scanner for Linux on IBM and LinuxONE servers.
- Quest offers a trial version of their Toad for Db2 tool.