Hello Friends:

We're interested in what Patrick at Computerworld will be writing
about the 3000 transition, but that will depend on who he can reach
who wants to be quoted.

Ken said, "We want to tell the straight story" about OpenMPE.

What is the straight story? On the face of it, the organization has
advocated and negotiated a helpful agreement with HP about
emulator-based MPE licenses. There's no legally-binding document,
however, and the HP document is full of statements like "HP Intends,"
because HP's lawyers wouldn't brook anything more binding. Perhaps
they will in the future, but there's no guarantee.

And now there's been talk at last month's HP World of a fundraising
drive for the organization, although Jon's comments in the HP World
session seem to be the only mention of the drive -- I can't find
anything about fundraising on the Web site.

Finally there's some movement to create a virtual lab of MPE experts
under the OpenMPE aegis. Members have heard of no budget, no roster
of experts announced, or a timetable for projects.

The emulator project, from all we can gather right now, is either:

  1. Only being pondered by one SW vendor, Allegro;

  2. Being coded as a prototype which might appear this fall, but not
for sale anytime soon by another SW vendor, SRI;

  3. Being pursued as a project thoroughly independent of OpenMPE by
Strobe Data, as a hardware card product. (We have a lengthy interview
with Strobe's founder Willard West coming up in the October NewsWire
issue.)

Members were surveyed in the spring about how many emulators they
might buy. And then there's those "every two weeks" phone calls
between Jon and Mike Paivinen.

What I'd like to know is this: Why is OpenMPE not an advocacy
organization for homesteading on the HP 3000? If it cannot make a
business case for this strategy, why does the organization exist?

Let me propose a more lasting project for OpenMPE: the access rights
to MPE/iX source code, to be used by the members of the
organization's vLab, with results to be shared among OpenMPE members.
That's more important than an emulator which competes with used
hardware for sales. The heart and soul of the 3000's unique value
lies in IMAGE and MPE, not in PA-RISC hardware.

--

Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
http://www.3000newswire.com
512.331.0075 -- [log in to unmask]