Christian Lheureux wrote:

>My own bet is Oct. 31, 2003, for dropping HP-UX.

As much as many people on this list would like to believe HP dropped MPE for
some mysterious and nefarious reason, it was a simple matter of economics.
The move to IA-64 caused the 3000 to be left behind, because there wasn't
enough anticipated business to make the port to IA-64 viable.  (Whether
those forecasts are accurate, or whether the depressed sales of 3000's could
have been prevented through some real effort to sell them is a different
subject.)  HP is still selling enough HPUX systems and services, it appears,
that it would be foolish to abandon it.  HPUX has a much larger installed
base today than MPE ever did, so there is a certain level of sales that will
be generated simply through upgrades.

Just as IA-64 killed MPE, I predict that the demise of HPUX will come when
some new generation of hardware will be offered with the OS du jour and not
HPUX.  I doubt that will happen as soon as 2003.  After all, the development
of IA-64 took longer than the time now remaining between today and October,
2003.  HP's current love affair with Linux is based on their predictions of
the future of the marketplace.  What actually happens will be up to the
customers, not HP.

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