Zelik writes:

>  If HP, Allegro, SRI or anyone else out there puts
>  out an emulator that is both functional and performs well, I would think a
>  $500 license fee or a $1000 license fee is dirt cheap compared to the cost
>  of migrating off MPE.  I for one would gladly pay double that or even
triple
>  that if it prevented me from the expense and headaches of migrating.
>
>  Think about it.....

There are two audiences for MPE on an emulator. The first is the one which
Zelik is addressing: current users who would really rather stay on MPE than
move. To that audience, an MPE/emulator license cost of $25,000 would be dirt
cheap compared to their potential migration costs.

But that audience is going to be only skin deep, numbering only in the few
hundreds, and will soon disappear. The far more important audience is the one
that's five years out, and that's the one that is currently unfamiliar with
MPE, where in the absence of any other information, price is everything in
selecting an operating system on which to base your business.

Moreover, regardless of what HP charges for an MPE license, I'm relatively
sure that a "wild west" mentality will take over relatively quickly after
2006. It's at that point in time when HP will now longer even publicly
discuss MPE or worse, won't even have the expertise to discuss it. The
competition for MPE usage at that time won't be the other major proprietary
operating systems, it's going to be Linux -- something that will only be
greatly more widely known then, and free.

Setting the price of MPE now based on homesteaders' concerns to what might be
considered a "fair" price will doom the future use of MPE. Personally, I
think $500 is about as high a price as the future market -- which is the
important market -- will tolerate, especially given that the price of the
emulator hasn't yet been added in.

Wirt Atmar