Mike Paivinen wrote: 
<Snipped some>
>First, we need to complete significant planning and investigation before we can make a decision. To ensure a 
>successful transition, should we decide to move forward, we are proceeding with an investigation to quantify the 
>work required to transition MPE's build and test processes to an outside organization. 

>The first step in the investigation is to create an inventory of the build, integration, and test processes that are used 
>to create a distribution of MPE/iX. The purpose of the inventory is to consolidate process information in a standard 
>way and to evaluate our processes for opportunities for simplification and increased efficiency. The evaluation is 
>being done with an eye to simplify any possible transition outside of HP. After the inventory is complete, we plan 
>to seek input from OpenMPE on hiring a non-HP, e3000-knowledgeable contractor to evaluate the process 
>documentation for completeness and to determine if it is sufficient to allow for a successful transition. We expect
 >that completing the process inventory and evaluation will take another 2-3 months from now. Soon thereafter, we 
>expect to hire the contractor. 
Thanks, for the update Mike. 

Beechglen would like to formally volunteer our services as an 'e3000-knowledgeable contractor' and donate our technical 
resources for the evaluation project you have outlined above. We have comprehensive experience with the e3000 platform, 
subsystems, networking, compilers and system debugger. 

We also participated extensively in the previous 'Open Sourcing' project back in 1999. 

Thanks,
Mike Hornsby Co-founder/Chief Technical Officer
Beechglen Development Inc. (beechglen.com)
513-922-0509 [log in to unmask]