John Burke wrote:

> To make it even scarier, I remain unconvinced that corporate HP will ever
> acquiesce to anything beyond the limited licensing proposed for an emulator
> (even that is more "intent" than fact). Look at its actions (or lack of
> actions) so far, approximately 2 years after the announcement. If it wanted
> to encourage (or even allow) a future for MPE it would, among other things,
> immediately allow for the conversion of used equivalent HP9000 systems to HP
> 3000s. It would actively encourage the development of an emulator. It would
> ... (fill in for yourself the other things HP could be doing).
>
> John
>

I admit that I fail to see how flooding the potential market for an
emulator with thousands of really cheap converta-boxes is going to
encourage any potential emulator developers to invest the $1 to $2
million needed create an emulator.

And yes, it really does cost that much.  It costs millions to develop
substantial software environments.  The development of Linux to its
current level of capability probably cost 100 times that much, but it
goes unrecognized because the cost was borne by many hundreds if not
thousands of individual contributors.  The people that work on Linux
as a labor of love are pretty high powered folks, in my experience,
and their hourly rates are correspondingly high.

This is not an official company statement, just my personal take on this.


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Alan Tibbetts           Strobe Data, Inc.
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