Some standards are gruel. Some are not. Proprietary is not necessarily
bad, but it isn't necessarily good, either. In the case of some of the
Stratus VOS COBOL extensions, many of them where essentially equivalent
to ANSI COBOL language features, except only available under VOS COBOL.
Where the line is, is less than clear. Do we feel that HP COBOL compares
favorably to what other vendors offer for their platforms? OTOH, I am
glad that I work with IMAGE instead of Oracle. OTOH, even with my
beloved isolation, if it takes x years of experience to grow and develop
a library of routines that encapsulate some level of understanding of a
platform, how long will it take to rediscover these functions on a new
platform?

I don't know if this is available without a subscription, but my HP
Smartfriend pointed me to
http://www.hp.com/esy/solutions/mainframe_alt/news/1d5.html#flex, where
I read with great disappointment the following:

The Transition to a Flexible IT Architecture
Beyond the Limitations of Legacy Systems
As information technology evolves, virtually every organization is
feeling pain from its existing IT resources. Application backlogs are
growing. IT operating costs continue to climb. Data on mainframes and
proprietary midrange systems is often inaccessible. New product lines --
being introduced at ever increasing rates -- must be supported. And
organizations are continually being challenged to do more with less.
Realizing that proprietary architectures cannot sustain a company's
competitive edge, corporations have begun to search for more flexible
and responsive IT environments. The result is that open systems and
client/server architectures have emerged as the foundation of a more
flexible IT architecture. Introducing new technologies into existing
legacy environments is now the primary challenge of many IT managers.