Charles (and others) after me:

> > Is there any precedence within HP for open sourcing something
> > important?  My impression from the limited samples that I'm
> > aware of is that they simply kill software and make sure no one
> > else can do anything with it.  OpenMail and Cooperative Services
> > come to mind. Can someone else contradict this?

While Charles asks a very pertinent question, my guess is that using
past precedent as a guide to whether or not HP will (or can be
convinced to (Wirt's "make them an offer they can't refuse") ) release
MPE and subsystem source code most likely does not apply:  The
expected 14 Nov announcement is itself unprecedented in the history
of the HP 3000....

SIDEBAR:    Closest thing in my mind is the (in)famous "Boston Tea
Party" 11 years ago;  where HP unbundled IMAGE...  Robert Hall (an
HP manager at the time) was heard to remark after escaping from the
near-riot at SIGIMAGE that "IMAGE will be rebundled over my dead
body"...   well, that's exactly what happened:  Within a few weeks he
didn't have the same job;  IMAGE was re-bundled;  and subsequently
dozens of TurboIMAGE enhancements were delivered (I know:  This
is very different, but whatever.....).

I know of at least one case (Information Access) where HP used other
products they did not control as building blocks (Crystal Reports for
one, IIRC);  which made releasing Info Access when they killed it
"messy" at best....   That argument DNA to MPE and TurboIMAGE....


Anyway, on the whole I'm actually fairly confident HP will more or less
constructively participate in an OPENMPE effort (degree of "more or
less" TBD, of course).  Even if there are some restrictions for the
next two years while "sales" are still going on (probably O.K. and likely
even necessary), as long as there is no fundamental roadblock and
HP provides a prompt & "reasonable" level of assistance to whatever
attempt is made to get a user-driven OPENMPE effort rolling ASAP
after 14 Nov, there might yet be an acceptably "civil" if drawn-out
divorce of the MPE user community from HP (that doesn't mean we
the users have to be happy about the announcement).

I reiterate what I see as two key points:

(1)   If the user community can get its act together to make an attempt
at getting OPENMPE off the ground, that project needs to have full HP
cooperation right out of the blocks.

(2)   User community access to and a detailed status update on the
MPE IA-64 Translator should be made available ASAP after 14 Nov..
...  and I'm thinking a few weeks at most, not months....

Ken Sletten

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