At 05:00 PM 3/23/99 -0800, Roy Buzdor wrote:
>However, there was a market for
>the products and services which they provided because
>of (IMO) less than ethical practices on the part of HP.

Sorry, but there is nothing unethical about a product
pricing strategy a company chooses.  We can debate all
day about this subject and will go no where. There is
no publicly available information about HP's pricing
model and the burden costs that are built into their
products.  And there is nothing unethical about a
company trying to make money to pay its employees/etc..
If you disagree with it and don't feel you're getting
a return to justify your expense you can always go
else where....that's called a free market.


>If HP sold the boxes based on what they were in terms
>of processing power, rather than cutting back on number
>of users, and charging less for a 9000 than it would for
>the exact same 3000 model, then there would be no market
>for the products provided by these vendors.

Again, this argument is based upon only the hardware aspects
involved and does not consider the differences in the
operating system software, which is a component of the
platform cost and is a 'value-added' attribute of the
price.  One also has to consider the volume of
sales and how that helps distribute the R&D expenses,
reducing the per-unit cost and allowing a manufacture
to lower pricing due to the competitive nature of the
industry.  There are a lot more 9000 boxes to help
reduce the per/unit costs for things as compared to
the 3000 family paying maintenance $.


>Question...if I purchased a 9000, and a version of
>MPE/ix sized for 20 users, and then with the help of
>a Elec-Eng, a soldering, and some boards that I bought
>from a shop going out of business, I converted that
>9000 into a 3000.

This gets into the area of 'derived works' based upon
the intellectual property that may be copyrighted by
HP.  You'll find that the boards themselves contain a
copyright, as they also represent intellectual property
of HP.  If you were to modify the boards on your own,
then we get into the area of derived works based upon
the copyrighted intellectual property of others, which
is a complex legal area (such as Borland/M$, or M$/Apple)

Also, if you modify the board itself and it
still has HP's copyright and you now sell this to
someone, you are facing fraud issues at the very least
because of HP's copyright on the board.  And if you
change the copyright on the board, then you've got
other difficulities....

Furthermore, I believe there have been cases whereby
reverse-engineering of intellectual property for self
gain has been tested in court and found to be a violation
of statute.


>Then I delved into the MPE/iX system
>and changed the 20 into a 200.  If I then sold that
>system as a mutated system, would I be violating any
>legalities, since I did the work myself, using parts
>which I perchased, and I did not use any unauthorized
>software to change the values in the OS?

Where did you get a license for the copy of MPE/iX you
now placed on a previous HP-UX box?  Didn't you just
violate copyright laws in installing it on a system for
which you did not have a license for?

And if indeed you changed the user count, you had to
use a copyrighted/licensed tool, as this information
is not maintained in the OS, but rather maintained
in the hardware itself and you had to use a tool
only HP can license to you to legally to make this
change.... And if indeed you reverse-engineered the
OS to patch-around all the checks for this information,
reverse-engineering itself is a violation of
intellectual property rights and patching the OS would
be 'derived' works.... And again, we see a false
representation of copyrighted material.

So if indeed you succeeded in some manner in doing any
of this, there are a number of different laws concerning
copyright, commercial trade, intellectual property, etc.
that could be grounds for an injunction as a first step
followed by other types/forms of legal action given that
you were not authorized by HP to act on their behalf in
producing these derived works..

And this is not just HP, it could very easily be IBM,
SUN, Compaq or a host of others!


>i.e. was the
>criminal action by these other companies the fact that
>they (1) used unauthorized software,

Yes.

>(2) bribed people inside HP to give them inside information,

It wasn't so much information as it was to provide them
illegal licensing of material according to the agreement they
had with obtaining this licensing.


>(3) got upgrade kits (funny, a 9000 to a 3000 is an UPGRADE)
>under the table,

This is not only hardware, but licensing of copyrighted material.

>or (4) that they were selling 3000s for a price that HP should
>have been selling them for?

I've yet to see any aspects of the alledged crime whereby
HP has come down on them due to the pricing they offered
to the end-customer.  If they did, a little anti-trust
law called the Taft-Hartley act would kick-in and HP
themselves would be suspected of price-fixing.  The
penalities for this are fairly stiff, and I can't think
of any corporation that would want to subject themselves
to this!  Furthermore, if this smelled of Taft-Hartley,
rest assured the FBI would be gathering data on HP,
not the 3rd parties so that the federal prosecutitors
could build an anti-trust case against HP.

And in terms of whether or not HP should have
been selling products at a certain price is a subjective
opinion which one does not have to agree to in a free
market.

All this pricing issue reminds me of a cartoon that I
see on the wall of a car repair place I use because I
trust them.  It basically is a homeless person on
the street and the caption reads:
   "Sure, I gave everyone a discount when I was in
    business."

So lets set this thread aside and simply watch what
develops.  Clearly we don't have all the data and I'm
sure more will come-out as this unfolds.


/jf
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