When asked what the competition to LegStar is, I generally reply no one, because there are no other open source integration solutions for mainframes (to the best of my knowledge).

There are several commercial competitors though. They all seem to gather in the same places. DataDirect and HostBridge are the only ones missing from this list.

Most of these vendors (maybe Seagull to a lesser extent) are mainframe-centric. What I mean by that is that their products run natively on the mainframe, are priced/licensed accordingly and are sold to mainframe minded project leads. This is a closed circle. No place for open source there. Customers are not asking for it and vendors don't want to hear about it.

But out there, there is a growing population of java minded project leads and developers who are taking over higher and higher responsibilities in large IT departments. Many times, they have to deal with COBOL/PL/I/CICS/IMS applications as part of their projects.

This younger generation is a lot more responsive to open source. We are working for them.