John D. Alleyn-Day continues the thread started (or
re-started) by Duane Percox:

> I'd like to suggest a modification to this scheme.

>Those who want the improvement pay for it.  Divide up
>the total cost by the number of contributors to come up
>with a "price".

>Anyone that wants the improvement afterwards pays this
>"price" (or possible 10% or 20% more ..........

>The only drawback to this scheme would be keeping track
>of who gets what in update tapes.

As one of people who got up and talked about this overall
issue at the IPROF HP Management Roundtable, I'm glad
to see the subject get more discussion before HP World....

Having said that, I must say that the "only drawback" John
mentions in this variation is indeed a serious one;  in fact,
IMHO it's serious enough that for practical purposes this
variation won't work.  Remember,  HP has *thousands*
of HP 3000 customers all over the world;  with their own
unique "mix" of HP subsystems.  But let's take even a case
where something is universal:  Image QUERY (well, O.K., I
suppose there are a few 3000's running out there that don't
have Image;  whatever).  What if:

Customer group # 1 pays for enhancement "A".
Customer group # 2 pays for enhancement "B".
Customer group # 3 pays for enhancement "C".

... where customer groups # 1, # 2, & # 3 may be partially
but not completely intersecting sets....  Now HP has to track
and ship four different versions of QUERY:  "A", "B", "C", and
the "standard" version...  Multiply this by all products that may
get one or more "user financed" enhancements by various
groups of users, and I think y'all will see that this very quickly
becomes an unmanageable software versioning nightmare.

Whatever scheme of user-financed enhancements to MPE/iX -
Image/SQL - etc. is adopted (and I sure hope one is !!!), once
it's done I think there is no good alternative to the entire user
base getting it;  i.e.:  If QUERY is enhanced in this way, *all*
sites with QUERY get the enhancement....  But the people
who pay get to decide what it is.....   :-)   The question is:
How best to pay.....

I would humbly suggest that this is an excellent subject for
submission of one or more HP Management Roundtable
questions for Chicago.  The URL is:

http://www.interex.org/hpworld/bbs/index.html

Ken Sletten