Hello Jim, and others,
 
I am not surprised that OpenMPE supporters would read the HP response this way -- I would too
in your shoes. Let me add that vCSY has always said that migrating our customers to other HP
platforms is our highest priority.  We have not kept this a secret and it reflects our  internal
priorities and those of our internal partner divisions (as well as many external partners). However,
we also realize that there will be many customers using their 3000s past the end of HP support.
They may be permanent homesteaders or they may just need more time to migrate. In either
case, we want to make sure that these customers are successful, and in particular, that their
3000 won't cause significant business issues for them.
 
For most of the customers using the 3000 past 2006, it will continue to run fine. There appears to
be enough 3rd parties offering h/w and MPE expertise that things should remain fairly stable past
2006.  But there is always the possibility of a severe security defect, or new peripheral support, or
new internet standard, which if not fixed or implemented in MPE, could make it difficult to continue 
using the 3000. We are aware of these potential problems and we are working on possible solutions.  
I believe that the perceived gap between what vCSY hopes to be able to do and what the OpenMPE 
community wants us to do is larger than the real gap -- but time will answer that. I think the bigger 
issue is related to timing. OpenMPE wants things now or at least promises now, and we are not able
to make those commitments yet. 
 
It is argued that if vCSY does not at least promise to do xyz now that more and more customers will 
leave the 3000 and perhaps leave HP. Myself and some others in vCSY see if differently. I believe the 
biggest factor in deciding to leave or stay with the 3000 is based on our 11/14/2001 announcement. 
Many businesses were considering leaving MPE anyway and that announcement sealed their decision. 
If their primary h/w vendor was obsolescing the 3000 then they could no longer rely on it in their business 
critical environment -- period. OpenMPE makes no difference to these customers. Smaller businesses
are more significantly impacted by HP's decision and staying on the 3000 may be a necessity for 
them. Still, many of these customers dropped HP support long ago and are doing fine. They are not able 
to get ordinary MPE s/w patches but they are still successful. They do not have access to all of our
diagnostics but they survive.  And to me the future looks brighter than the present for many of our
customers who don't have HP support and don't purchase from HP, since I believe at least some of 
the requests made by the OpenMPE community will satisfied.
 
So, though it is true that vCSY does not want to *encourage* use of the 3000 past end of HP support,
we are still open to licensing MPE source code, to enabling 9000 -> 3000 conversions, to opening up 
MPE diagnostics, etc, to help reduce the chances that the 3000 causes negative business impact past 
2006.
 
I do not think OpenMPE is dead. I think they've severed a useful purpose and will continue to be
important and needed in the 3000 community.  Paul Edwards recently announced SIB'04. It would
be a real shame if you do not take the time to think of what you'll need in MPE or MPE subsystems
to run your business past 2006. This is the time to ask for those enhancements or bug fixes! Some
of you prefer that we leave MPE alone, keep it stable. Others may see needs they'll have in a year or
two and now is the time to make those needs known. Obviously, we know about the hot items, 9x7s
on 7.x, unthrottled A-class, SSCONFIG. These are all being tracked and we have a small team trying 
to resolve these customer needs. What we are looking for in SIB '04 are more traditional requests, 
especially those that impact security, networking, and system limits. So please think of your future 
MPE needs and vote in SIB '04, while Ross is still willing to have engineers work on these 
enhancements!
 
 
My personal thoughts,
Jeff Vance, vCSY

________________________________

From: OpenMPE Support Group on behalf of Jim Phillips
Sent: Tue 1/20/2004 7:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Free MPE



I think this line from HP's response sums up what we
can expect from them:

"While we acknowledge the customer needs that will
extend beyond 2006, it has never been our intention,
nor do we have any plans, to encourage the use of the
HP e3000 after HP end-of-support."

Reading this the way Alfredo would have us do it (like
a love letter, read the lines, between the lines,
around the lines...) I interpret this to mean that HP
has no intent of releasing MPE source or assisting in
the development of a third-party maintainer of MPE
(since doing so would definitely "encourage the use of
the HP e3000 after HP end-of-support").

I would say that for all practical purposes, OpenMPE
is a dead issue.

Jim Phillips