First, it's not a very large industry. And the technical problem is very difficult to solve - you have many different versions (from each decade) of the langua

First, it's not a very large industry. And the technical problem is very difficult to solve - you have many different versions (from each decade) of the language to be compatible with. But most importantly, think about the result of success - translating cobol successfully to a modern language means that your customers don't need your product once they're done. This is why MF does lame PR once a year - they want to keep businesses from modernizing away from their product.