I agree with your concerns.  Hey, I am not a fan of "open systems" per se.
Many/most of my customers use them and use them very effectively.  I still
find HP-UX more complex than MPE, but then again it's all in what you know
and what you feel comfortable with.

My point in the prior message was the way Wirt put it, it made a great case
against MPE and for Open Systems.

I am more inclined toward systems that are developed for profit.  They seem
to have more emphasis on development of new features and advancing the state
of the art.

MPE in its heyday really advanced the state of the art,  but fell out of
disfavor within HP because it was much easier and more lucrative to push
boxes that ran an "open system," because that is what the magazines were
covering.  "Management by magazine" has killed many good ideas and concepts
over the decades.

Say what you will for or against Windows but it has advanced the state of
the art.  The latest release Windows XP is simply superb, especially when
you consider where the PC was 10 years ago.  Take your mind back to that
time and compare the state of the art then and now.  The difference is
simply astounding.  (If you are a Mac user, you can do the same exercise and
yes, I understand you think Apple invented everything.)

Linux is still playing catch up in terms of features and will probably keep
doing that for a long time and then slowly fade.  Ultimately, if there is no
money poured into development, the product ages as other ones move on.

On the other hand, take the 3000 of 10 years ago and compare it to today,
there isn't that much difference.  The biggest ones would be PCI
architecture and the POSIX shell, both of which are mostly invisible to the
users.  Unfortunately.  You say, but it's so stable.  I agree, however,
other platforms are stable as well, so that edge is taken away.  New
features become important.

When everybody wants all software for free, of course the boxes become a
commodity.  I have yet to understand the business model that fuels the
innovations in open source.  When everybody wants software for free, do not
be surprised when IT salaries start dropping.  Be careful what you wish for.

During the flight tonight, I was reading the latest issue of what has become
one of my favorite computer magazine, CPU.  In it, there is an article by
Alex St. John in which he states the following:

All companies that made 100% stable products lost their business to the
folks who made 95% stable products with more capabilities.

He is talking about PCs, but I think it applies just as well to servers and
larger systems.  Think about it.



Denys...

-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
[log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 5:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Commitment to a product

But hasn't the SAMBA TNG project run out of steam? And Mozilla finally
reached 1.0, after how long? There is ultimately no guarantee that everyone
will stick around to help out with OSS. Even Linux could fall entirely out
of favor, and sooner rather than later. How many other free UNIXen are there
today?

Both those motivated by profit, and those who have other jobs and are
motivated by something less tangible, may decide to spend their time doing
other things.

Of course, if it's still new enough, the commodity hardware ought to still
be able to run something for a couple of years.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com

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