Eric Sand after Duane after me:

First me:

> If DCOM is going to be on HP-UX, I wonder how much of
> an effort it would be to get it running under MPE/iX ??..

Then some very good follow-on by Duane:

~> Asked at IRPOF'96:..  at HPWorld'96:..  at HPWorld'97:
~> in other venues:..        on 3000-L:

~> Q: Has HP considered providing DOT for the HP 3000?
~> Q: What is HP doing to provide this functionality on the 3000?
>   A: Our customers haven't been asking for this so we
>       don't have any plans.

>1. Distributed Object Technology is not going away. .....
>2. This is like very forward thinking hardware issues. ....
>3. This is a great area for tilling the soil while the
>    developer community comes up to speed.
>4. I challenge HP to articulate a vision for software objects
>    on the HP 3000, especially distributed ones.
>5. Don't forget that you sell a CORBA 2.0 compliant ORB
>    for HP-UX.

Finally a good example by Eric of the downside if HP
does not respond positively to Duane's timely challenge:

<<    Many of the detractors of the HP3000 (that say the
HP3000 is a "dead" platform) are saying so for the very
reason that there are no Distributed Object suites available,
either DCOM or CORBA compliant. There are a great many
sites that our company supports that will move from the
HP3000 in the next 2-4 years unless this is addressed.
These sites do NOT want to move if at all possible. Our vote
is for CORBA, but anything is better than nothing.  >>

Here's my $0.25 addendum:

1.  I hope we won't hear the "Our customers haven't been
asking" response from HP on this question again;  clearly
we are beyond that stage.

2.  I agree with everything Duane said, and second his
challenge....  I'll go so far as to ask Kriss Rant if he might
be good enough to give 3000-L some thoughts on this.   :-)

3.  The "detractors of the HP3000" that Eric mentions are
clearly wrong:  The 3000 is alive and well right now.  But that
doesn't mean there are no remaining concerns for the future.
Just knowing "if" on CORBA / DCOM would be a major move
in the right direction, even without knowing exactly "when".

4.  If we are voting, our site would pretty clearly say "DCOM".
We will never be anything other than a 100 percent Windows
world on the client side....

Ken Sletten