Mark Wonsil, then Frank Gribbin (wisely) wrote:

Mark:
> You know, I always thought this would be a transparent event.  Let me
> explain.  When Posix and the HFS showed up, I thought there was going
> to be a slow convergence of MPE and UX.  I saw the Posix Shell as
> training wheels for the future.  I envisioned more and more Posix
> features going from emulation mode to native.  At some major release
> the CI would be emulated in one of the Unix shells or CI would be
> implemented as its own Unix shell. The same would be true for the MPE
> file system.  I thought that HP would eventually write the MPE file
> system under UX.  I thought it was very smart for the hardware to
> converge and figured the same coming for the operating system so that
> at one upgrade, all of the sudden there was one operating system and
> nobody would really notice.  MP-UX?  I know, but can you blame me for
> dreaming?

Frank:
> Dreaming ?  I recently advocated:
>
> "If you implement all your OS's on the same IA64 machines, you keep
> everyone happy, save money on hardware, all the OS's will benefit by
> borrowing from one another, and an eventual hybrid will emerge."
>
> This would have provided much cleaner migration paths and the
> "eventual hybrid" would have had the best of all worlds.

This is basically the same as an assumption that I've had for quite
some time - that MPE would become a shell under UX, with the CI, Image,
COBOL, View, etc. running in some sort of emulation mode.  Maybe not
every function, but a good portion of them.

Make it a separately purchased package.  Charge the price differential
between the 9000 and the 3000.  Whatever.  At least the current MPE
installed base will have an easy path to follow, and can feel that
their investments into the platform have not been completely wasted!

 +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
  "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
  butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet,
  balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take
  orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze
  a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal,
  fight efficiently, die gallantly.  Specialization is for insects."
  -- Robert Heinlein
 +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
  Tim Ericson       tim dot ericson     DenKor Dental Management Corp.
  Sr. Systems Analyst    at denkor dot com      http://www.denkor.com
 +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Maybe that quote should include 'migrate a business from one OS to
another'?

T.

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