The emulator is written in C with a smattering of assembly code where performance is crucial, and actually allows code, operating systems, and other systems software written for many generations of IBM mainframe hardware to run atop other servers. TurboHercules is co-headquartered in Paris, France, where Bowler moved after he left the United Kingdom, and in Seattle, Washington, in close proximity to the one big software company that has in the past taken a shining to anything that gave Big Blue some grief, particularly with mainframes.
So, if you are reading this, Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, IBM's New York lawyers, this is not about replacing existing mainframes, but about giving their software a place to run when the mainframe crashes. Rather than go straight at the IBM mainframe base, which many a company has tried to do and ended up in court, TurboHercules is taking an oblique angle of attack on the mainframe base, positioning a commercialized version of the Hercules mainframe emulator as a platform for disaster recovery machine for working mainframes and their software stacks.
Roger Bowler - the creator of the open source Hercules mainframe emulator - has put together a company called TurboHercules to try to commercialize the decade-old program that he created as a 'programmer's plaything.'
