Ken writes after me:
> > If you have to pay $500 for the MPE license, can you
> > still afford a few hundred more to get a more
> > professionally packaged emulator with some degree of
> > support, or would you rather have a free or almost-
> > free version that you download and which we can't afford
> > to even answer your emailed questions about :-)
>
> Again speaking just for me:  No contest:  I would be
> willing and would in fact much prefer to pay "a few
> hundred more" to get "some degree of support".  What
> we are looking at is moving all of MPE into a completely
> new and "foreign" environment;  It's unreasonable to
> think there won't be questions and issues along the way.
> Unless someone is thinking of getting an MPE emulator
> stricktly as an idle-curiosity, we-don't-really-care-
> what-it-does-(or doesn't)-do toy for when they go to the
> old programmers rest home, we're gonna need at least
> some level of professional support, IMO...

If you're going to be using it for this sort of thing then I think we'd
expect you to be buying the fully supported production version of the
package, or perhaps paying a higher fee for support.  The potential "cheap"
version would be for non-mission-critical uses.

> > We could not sell a cheap version independently, but

This probably didn't parse right.  I should have said "We could optionally
not sell...".  I didn't mean this to sound like a statement that "We will
not be selling".  Sorry.

> > include a certain number of limited development/support
> > licenses (limited as above) with each "production" license.
> > So to get your laptop 3000 you would have to get your
> > company to buy a production license.
>
> Darn...  shoot...  rats...:  Without getting into the
> byzantine maze of "our company" right now, at least until
> they give up on what are IMO some unreasonable expectations
> it's gonna be REAL hard for me to sell "my company" on
> buying a production MPE emulator in the near term.  But I
> do very much want to get a "laptop version" that I will pay
> for out of my own pocket (or; rather: A "desktop version")
> of MPE.

I think Ken himself constitutes perhaps 100% of the "serious hobbyist"
market for an HP3000 platform emulator :-)

Ken, in exchange for your long service to the community, you'll get a free
copy for your own personal use.  Assuming we ever have something to give
away that is :-)

> Just for argument's sake assume that the average gross sales
> price of a production emulator ends up being $5000. Any idea
> how many of same you would have to sell in order to make it
> appear to be worthwhile to seriously undertake the effort ?.

I won't speculate publicly on exactly what we think the make-it-or-break-it
numbers are.  The amount needed to cover the cost of development is of
course less than the amount needed to make it profitable enough to do
instead of something else.

> Note that I pick a number per average emulator because I
> expect it is not just total gross revenue that matters; i.e:
> Overall costs would be different if (extreme exaggeration)
> one emulator was sold to one company for $500,000;  compared
> to selling 1000 emulators to 500 companies for $500 each
> (in addition to the HP MPE license fee)...

Right, though there's a surprisingly large cost-of-sales for each unit, so
as the quantity goes up, there's a limit to how far the price can go down.

G.