At 04:47 PM 12/7/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>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

And in the early days of Windows vs OS/2, the M/S SDK was significantly
cheaper than the IBM SDK for OS/2.  Of course M/S won, because it was
cheaper for the developers to write applications for Windows than OS/2.  As
has been stated by other posters, businesses buy solutions.


>What comparable service did HP ever offer their developer community?

Before 1990, HP worked closely with 3rd party software providers.  Also
consultants/contractors.

>
>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.

Yes

>
>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

Let me be dumb here (I do it well).  Just how much does it cost to develope
a Cobol compiler?  (Put you language here)  The specifications do not
change all that often.
>
>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.
>

When did HP anounce the first demise of the 3000?  (The one that was
canceled.)  Anyway, HP hasn't done anything with/for the 3000 for about the
last 10 years.  Just letting it slowly fade away, so that it would get to a
level that would justify killing it.  I think it will work this time.

Ric
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