was OT: non-stop and integrity

Quoting donna garverick <[log in to unmask]>:

> <http://h20223.www2.hp.com/NonStopComputing/downloads/ClipperNav.pdf>
>
> read the 2nd paragraph on the 1st page....         - d
>
> Donna Garverick, HP-CSA   Sr. System Programmer
> dgarverick -at- longs -dot- com
> 925-210-6631              Longs Drug Stores

From the document donna cites, 2nd paragraph, 1st page: "Systems built with
older proprietary architectures tend to run out of steam – they can no longer
be expanded; they can no longer be upgraded; they can no longer be maintained
economically. They must be replaced. The question then becomes – replaced by
what?"

In the case of MPE/iX and HP, this was largely an artificially imposed limit on
expandability and upgrades. State Farm was for many years after HP to increase
the range of machines towards the higher end PA-RISC line on which they could
run MPE/iX, including not only the cpu box itself but storage devices (think
tape backup) and IO bays. Even with the same hardware underlying the two
operating systems HP-UX and MPE/iX, HP would not allow MPE/iX to run on
anything but a subset of machines available to HP-UX, including cpu speed and
IO expandability. Why? That's still a question as far as I'm concerned that HP
has not had a good answer for in the eyes of its customers.

As history shows, up to a few months before the 11-14-2001 announcement, HP was
showing a five year roadmap for MPE/iX leading to Itanium, just as HP-UX was
being driven to Itanium. Then 11-14-2001, and to outward eyes looking inward
(customers, think customers...) HP announces due to an "eroding ecosystem" it
was going to discontinue selling and supporting MPE/iX.

And now, a still significant portion of that customer base is either just
beginning to address the need and expense of migrating to another platform, or
has decided they will remain on the platform indefinitely. Either case puts the
need of the customer to remain on the platform beyond what HP support will
provide.

HP has indicated they will be making their announcement soon on the release of
MPE/iX to an organization or organizations that will provide support beyond the
end of HP support. Having talked with the folks inside HP just prior to the
OpenMPE meeting HP graciously agreed to host and having had a case of "carriage
wit" (thinking of something you wanted to say after the show and you're in your
carriage headed home) - I'd like to add MPE/iX is what it is today because of
the contribution of all of the customers, first through countless individuals
writing programs that filled in gaps in the operating system as it existed at
the time and contributing those programs to a software library and some of
those program functions were then incorporated into MPE/iX (the listeq and
listftemp commands were originally contributed programs) and then later through
the system improvement ballot. The end result is MPE/iX as it is today, in
various flavors - 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, 7.5 and at some sites even back to 4.0, 5.0,
etc.

My "carriage wit" plea to HP is to take into account that MPE/iX is today what
it is because of the participation and contributions of the community that has
used the OS over the years, and now that HP will be leaving the marketplace
turn the care and upkeep of MPE/iX over to those that have helped create it in
the first place - the customer base. From the legal standpoint, HP owns the
copyright to MPE/iX (with some subset portions licensed from others) but in a
larger view, MPE/iX is the intellectual creation of the customer base that has
used it over the past thirty years and HP together - and the customer base that
remains wishes to continue using the product they developed with HP after HP
stops support on 12-31-2006.

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