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I assume GnuCOBOL can run on GNU/Linux. https://gnucobol.sourceforge.io/ https://gnucobol.sourceforge.io/

• msla 4y ago
  GnuCOBOL not only runs on Linux, it's pretty far along https://gnucobol.sourceforge.io/faq/index.html https://gnucobol.sourceforge.io/faq/index.html > GnuCOBOL implements a substantial part of the COBOL 85, COBOL 2002, COBOL 2014 and upcoming COBOL 202x standards, as well as many extensions from existing COBOL compilers. It's also in the Ubuntu package repos, from a quick check. The GCC Cobol aspirant recently gained compliance with Cobol-85 https://lwn.net/Articles/922951/ https://lwn.net/Articles/922951/ There is active Free Software development on Cobol tools.
  • lokedhs 4y ago
    Unless things have changed lately, it's still very annoying to get your Gnu COBOL program interacting with the test of your system. Something as simple as reading a file is a lot harder than you'd expect. And opening a TCP connection requires you to use specialised API calls to call the C functions directly, and the syntax for that was pretty horrible. COBOL is designed for handling well formed input data, process them, and then return well formed output to the next step in the chain (on the mainframes this is coordinated by JCL but I'm not sure how you do it on Linux).
• moomin 4y ago
  That’s not really the same thing is it, though? I’m sure you can write new COBOL programs using it, but the challenge is the old ones. And for a million reasons, they’re tied to big iron. It’s part of the fabric of our society, but it’s still a pain to work with.