Wirt,

        I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, but you, like everybody,
are entitled to an opinion and I respect that right.  I would be curious
to hear from others in the list.  Is Wirt in a minority with this
perspective or does he run ahead of the group echoing the general
sentiment?

Thanx,
    Jon Backus



-----Original Message-----
From: OpenMPE Support Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Wirt Atmar
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 1:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [OPENMPE] Focus Group


Chuck writes:

> While I can see the need to limit the number of participants in the
> conference call to a manageable number, what is with the PRIVATE
> NON-ARCHIVED list server to discuss the conference calls? Is HP and
> the  board really that afraid of what will be said that it cannot risk

> it  being exposed to the general membership of this, supposedly, open

> community?
>
>  This level of secrecy being applied to an obsoleted operating system
> has  passed excessive and reached the stage of comical.

While I certainly don't agree with everything that Chuck writes, I
profoundly agree with what he has written here.

The emulator is dead, and thus the future of MPE is dead, and two
agencies have killed it: HP and OpenMPE. Of the two, I blame OpenMPE the
most.

While I realize that there are individual people in CSY who very much
wanted this process to succeed, HP has clearly indicated by its actions
that it wants MPE to go nowhere. However, that should not have been a
surprise. That is the default course of action. A corporation can never
have the integrity or character that of an individual -- and so long as
a corporation is manned by people such as Winston Prather, people who
value their own careers far more than their personal responsibilities,
then a corporation is always going to act in the most risk-averse,
cover-your-ass manner possible.

But those same characteristics also make a corporation exceedingly
vulnerable to concerted public opinions. In general, it's rather easy to
direct the actions of a corporation, simply because the corporation
fears negative publicity so much more than anything else -- especially
if you're the risk-averse, CYA manager who might be tagged with causing
what might turn out to be well-reported, large-scale negative reactions.

The secrecy associated with OpenMPE from its very beginnings was the
dumbest, most self-defeating, most amateurish agreement ever made by any
such advocacy group. It killed any sense of enthusiasm or empowerment
among the potential user base -- and that was lethal enough by itself.
Worse though, it put the OpenMPE board into a conspiratorial
relationship with HP, wholly under HP's control. Whoever is a current
member of the board and agreed to this condition of deep secrecy should
resign immediately. While I do not believe that the situation is
salvagable, the only remaining hope -- if there is any -- is to remake
the board from scratch and hold all future discussions in the open,
immediately available to everyone for comment, without any form of
editing or censorship.

Wirt Atmar