Mark writes:

> > Without fresh offerings in software, any platform will die.
>
>  Absolutely. That's why I, Lars and "The Other Mark" (B) have busted
>  our butts porting stuff to MPE and adding framework to make it easier
>  to bring software to MPE. Even so, we had world class software
>  running on MPE at one time. It still didn't help the platform
>  survive.

In complete disagreement with Mark's assessment, I would back all of the
POSIX stuff out of MPE. POSIX really is not much more than a poor imitation
of UNIX. Given that Linux is freely available, it doesn't even belong on MPE.
It is nothing other than an unnecessary and generally unuseful
complexification of MPE.

There is a truly substantial niche out there for a simple,
easy-to-understand, highly reliable operating system and database. There are
very many more mom-and-pop, mainstream, Main Street businesses in the world
than there ever will be "enterprise" level customers. This is the untapped
market, one that Linux will never really capture. But that market exists only
if MPE is simplified and made even more understandable to the average human
than it is now. But if that simplified MPE should come to exist, MPE could
compete very well with Linux, in both numbers and true economic value.
Indeed, I suspect that it would become the dominant operating system for
every small and medium commercial use other than web servers and embedded
systems.

Wirt Atmar