...
> Oh yes, of course, HP would be blasted in the press, mostly for
> abandoning a 30-year old platform. Then HP could counter that bad
> press by telling how they helped users migrate off last century's
> infrastructure (the 3000)

But last centuries architecture, hardware anyway, is the same as HP-UX.
Unless you're referring to the high-tech crippling code.  ;-)

> and invented this century's (Itanium-2).

Which has yet to reach a critical mass, so I wouldn't start bragging just
yet.

> And other press would praise HP for their migration plans, their
> great care of customers,

Much like a mother bird pushing their young out of the nest to teach them to
fly...  ;-)

> ...IMHO, it's a tie,
> at worst, and a big PR victory for HP if they are careful enough to
> handle it.

I think it's a tie at best and they have some 'mind' fields they're going to
have to cross to avert a black eye in the enterprise arena.

> So my point is, OK I hate HP's decision to kill MPE, and I hate even
> more their lackadaisical handling of the homesteading community, but
> my biggest fear is that we simply do not have enough leverage. In
> another post I got this morning, someone else was referrign to
> threats of litigation. This is nonsense. If there had been a serious
> threat, it would have materialized by now, 2 1/2 years after 11/14.
>
> In a nutshell, we may be overstating our strength.
>

If people come to the conclusion that they have nothing to gain, they will
ask themselves, "what is there to lose?"  If their ship is going down, they
may want to take the people who put the hole in their boat with them.  HP
would have been better off if they would have developed a way in folding the
MPE world into HP-UX instead of cutting bait.  But that ecosystem is now
dead and the users have been turned out to the Wilde.

Personally, this the situation has made me more agnostic.  Where I used to
automatically recommend HP, I now peruse other options.  Everything is on
the table.  I've got closer to Java and maybe to .Net if the Mono project
shows some stability and escapes litigation woes from MS.  I've even become
agnostic to computer languages.  I just don't want to see my clients over a
barrel again.

Mark W.