Jim,

  CSY's 918DX program morphed into HP's CSP (which begat CSPP,
which begat DSPP :).  The program was open to pretty much any
company that wished to write/port applications to the 3000.  You
had to be a Premier member (if my terminology is correct) to get
the real benefits of the program, but for your $850/year USD, you
received yearly MPE/iX updates with most subsys "developer" tools
(compilers, debugging tools, etc), hefty hardware discounts, and
some marketing exposure by HP (ok, don't everyone laugh at once
about that one :).  There were some rough spots, but overall it
is a nice and inexpensive program for small developers.

Regards,
Michael L Gueterman
Easy Does It Technologies LLC
http://www.editcorp.com
voice: 888.858.EDIT or 573.368.5478
fax:   573.368.5479
--

-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of James B. Byrne
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 3:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] The Real Story About HP's Announcement...


On 6 Dec 2001, at 9:57, Cortlandt Wilson wrote:

> I can't vouch for the reality of the "free compilers", I sure can't think
of
> many, but in any case what business model should have HP used to pay for
the
> significant cost of creating and supporting compilers?   Frankly I don't
> believe there is a better one.

Free is relative. I pay Microsoft about $4,000 CAD (~2,600 USD)
annually for the MSDN enterprise kit.  This gives me every piece of
software that Microsoft sells, including all their operating systems,
every one of their development tools, all of the manuals, etc; plus
monthly updates together with online and telephone support for a full
year.  For another $1,500 I can have a wintel box suitably sized for
development.  So for five and half grand I am in business as a
developer for MS.  It has been thus since 1994 when I first joined
their program.

What comparable service did HP ever offer their developer community?
The first and the last attempt was the developer's 918LX so far as I
am aware.  What was the comparable cost of entry together with
software support costs for the first year?

HP's business goal was (or should have been) to make their HP3000
product attractive for consumers.  Their consumer was small business.
 What makes a particular computer system attractive to a small
business are applications, preferably cheap applications.  That means
a computer company needs to entice as many developers to develop for
their products as possible.

Making compiler development a profit centre in this case is
ridiculous.   It isn't realistic to expect that independent
developers have the resources to fund the development of tools for a
particular platform.  The vast majority of computers aren't purchased
for development but for application use.  A high entry cost to
developers simply acts to limit the supply of new applications and
thus reduces the overall competitiveness of your real product.

I don't believe that HP's business model for the HP3000 was the best
possible.  I certainly don't believe that their model for funding
compiler and other application development tools made much sense at
all after 1990.

Regards,
Jim

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