If I'm not mistaken Wirt is the only software vendor (utility or
application) that has responded to the issue of HPCPUNAME and HPSUSAN and
he's making moves that eliminate his concerns.  Does this mean that none of
the other vendors care about the presence of these variables or not?
Perhaps the emulator vendor(s) don't even need to care about this aspect
then.

Thanx,
        Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: OpenMPE Support Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
Wirt Atmar
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 6:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [OPENMPE] PA-RISC Emulator - 3rd Party Software


Jon asks:

> For
>  example, the format, need, and execution of HPCPUNAME and HPSUSAN.  I
>  like for some of the 3rd party vendors in the list to join in with their
>  thoughts on this issue.  Historically 3rd party software has used a
>  combination of this information (and perhaps others) to "lock" a copy of
the
>  software onto a specific box.  I'm assuming the 3rd party software
vendors
>  are still interested in this ability but it would be better for them to
>  confirm it rather then us to assume it.

We've been an enthusiastic user of HPCPUNAME and HPSUSAN as price tiering
and
anti-theft mechanisms, respectively, for as long as they've existed in the
HP3000. To us, price-tiering is not a dirty word or an intrinsically ugly
concept. It allows smaller organizations to run copies of software they
could
never otherwise afford. However, our financial future is now completely
divorced from MPE. My advocacy of a free and open MPE is wholly
philosophical
-- MPE is simply too good an operating system to let die -- but we will
otherwise soon no longer have any vested interest in it.

We are constructing all of our products now to run on virtually any host,
using any operating system, running under any language, so long as the
client
is a Windows PC. Because there will be no consistent equivalent of an
HPCPUNAME or HPSUSAN number on whatever host system the user may be running,
as a practical matter, we simply can no longer depend on their presence, or
anything like them, being there. Thus we're switching to a user-based
pricing
plan, a mechanism that would work just as well for an emulated MPE O/S,
running on any size of box.

Although we can see no practical alternative to doing this, this particular
approach has the advantage that it seems to be considered the most fair
pricing policy by the greatest number of posters every time the subject of
pricing has come up on HP3000-L.

FYI, if you wish to read it, an outline of the general design approach we're
taking, along with our expected pricing, is included below, taken from a
portion of one of our relevant web pages. But to answer your question
directly, the bottom-line is that equivalents of the HPCPUNAME and HPSUSAN
values would no longer be fundamentally important to us.

Wirt Atmar

=======================================

The Design Criteria

Several rules govern the design of the new QueryCalc. Primary among them
are:

The new version will be significantly less platform-dependent than the
previous one was. This is being accomplished primarily by moving 95% of
QueryCalc's behavior onto the PC. For all of the vile comments and jokes
that
are made about Microsoft, their committment to Windows is absolute, and we
believe that that committment works in your favor. We believe that Windows
is
the only truly stable platform in today's environment and consequently
represents the best platform for long-term investment. We don't foresee
nearly that same level of stability in either host operating systems or
databases, thus only five percent of the code will reside on the host
server,
with that code optimized for that particular server and database. Because
such a smaller proportion of QueryCalc will reside on the host, the overall
risk to the user organization is minimized.

The license for QueryCalc will reside on the host server, not on the users'
PC's. The new version of QueryCalc will again be tiered-priced, just as the
old version was. Tiered pricing allows smaller organizations to use software
that they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford. But because there will be so
many different versions of host hardware, associating the price of the tiers
to specific hardware configurations would be impossible. Instead, the new
tiers will be centered around the number of simultaneous users that will be
allowed. Three tiers are planned: five, twenty, and an unlimited number of
users.

If the user faithfully replicates the architecture of his databases onto
whichever new host he chooses, the PC-based version of QueryCalc will be
100%
compatible with his existing HP3000 reports, thus the user will lose none of
what may well be a massive investment in the reports that he has constructed
over the years on his HP3000's.

Because the new QueryCalc will consist of two parts, a freely downloadable
PC-based "player" (the 95% portion) and a host-based "server" portion (the
5%
part), a primary guiding design criterion has been:

We want it to be possible for a user to go to a new office anywhere in the
world, sit down at a new PC, download the "player" portion of QueryCalc, and
once done, be able to log onto his central server -- anywhere in the
world --
and download and begin to execute his reports. We want the time to be up and
running on a new PC in a new office to be less than 30 minutes.

The second beneficial attribute of this design will be the obvious
sharability of reports. Rather than have to transport spreadsheets and
databases by either floppy or email, as you do now with Excel and Access,
anyone who can sign onto the central server and who can supply the proper
passwords will be able to receive, execute and print the reports stored
there.


Expected Pricing

The expected pricing* of the new version of QueryCalc is as follows:

                  5 simultaneous users      $5,500
                 20 simultaneous users      12,500
          unlimited simultaneous users      18,500

Under this pricing plan, any number of users may download the "player"
portion of QueryCalc and have that software available on their local PC's,
but no more than the licensed number of users may be running QueryCalc on
the
host at any one time. Thus, if you opt for a 5-user license, and five users
are currently running QueryCalc, the sixth user will be refused access until
one or more users sign off.

     --http://aics-research.com/qc/migration.html

=======================================