On 24 Feb 2003 at 14:45, Chuck Ryan wrote:

> With the exception of the attempt at stealth marketing research
> performed by the board on HP's behalf there has been little to
> indicate any interest by the board in the community's opinion at all.

Please tell me what that is. And be realistic ... HP is not going to
rescind their decision. Dates have been announced and programs are in
motion. Given the reality of today, what is it the community wants
that is not being delivered? See my comments below about the emulator
before answering.

> The entire process has been hidden behind a stack of NDA's. The board
> presented OpenMPE as an open community project and then stepped inside
> the board room and locked the door on the community.

Sorry, the NDAs aren't by my choice. Sometimes they're a necessary
evil to get things done. So be it ... I'll live with it.

> I would love to have the ability to run a few legacy apps on an
> emulated system. But if HP is determined to make me jump through hoops
> to do it, then it may not be worth the effort. Which is what I suspect
> is the goal of this convoluted approach.

Can I ask how you are jumping through hoops? Here's the way I see
this: You go to a web site, arrange for payment, agree to licensing
terms and either download the software or wait for the CD. That's
about as simple as it can be from HP.

If your argument is that you need to get MPE from one vendor (HP) and
the emulator from another, that argument simply doesn't hold water.

There are very few sites out there today (please name one if you can)
that don't have multiple third parties involved. Do you use any of
the Adager, Robelle, MB Foster, ORBiT, Bradmark, VeSoft, etc tools on
your machines? And, unless you're large enough to deal directly with
HP for your hardware sales, you're already going through a third
party to get HP hardware. I see no difference in this model that
means you're jumping through hoops.

> For right now this announcement tells me little more than I may be
> able to boot MPE for $500 if a company chooses to write an emulator
> and I go buy more HP hardware to run it on.

True, but it now allows those to step up and go the next step. Before
this, there was zero chance that an emulator would come into
existence. I'll bet you not a single one of the companies that
expressed an interest have invested in building an emulator to this
point in time because there would've been no way to legally run MPE
on it. No one is going to invest the dollars required in something
that can never be used.

Face the reality of that statement: without the ability to legally
run MPE on a non-native 3000, an emulator would never exist. Boy, it
is pretty simple to see what the first task to undertake might be
under those circumstances. So again, I ask: what is it that we
should've done if not working towards resolving this issue first?


--
Mark Klein
http://www.dis.com
PGP Key Available