Well, you've certainly opened a can of worms here. I continue to me both
amazed and depressed at HP's intransigence when it comes to these items.
There really is no downside to doing any of these and a potential upside to
most.

>         Continuing to work are way through each section of
> the OpenMPE presentation
> from HP World.  Are there further thoughts, reactions, and/or
> concerns on
> the section HP labeled "No Current Plans"?
>
> "No Current Plans"
> * No plans to enable 9000s to be converted to 3000s

So, cut off your nose to spite your face. If IPF actually takes off like HP
and Intel hope it will, then the HP-UX crowd, since they always have to have
the hottest box, will be turning in N-class systems right and left. By
permitting these to be converted to HP 3000s, HP potentially increases their
value on the used market. There is no downside to doing this.

> * No plans to release an "Open Source" version of MPE

OK, by now we've all heard the stories. MPE contains third-party code which
creates license issues and the build process is a mess with multiple
languages, special compilers etc.  However, it seems to me that HP is
concentrating their energies on telling us all the reasons why it can not be
done instead of focusing their energies on how it could be done. Personally,
I think this is because they do not want to do it - HP wants to maintain
tight and exclusive control over MPE, IMAGE, etc.

While I acknowledge there is some cost to HP associated with pursuing this
opening up of MPE, I do not see any downside to HP. Remember, they are going
to stop selling the HP 3000 on October 31, 2003. No more will be sold. No
more revenue. [Yes, they have suggested they might sell licenses to MPE
after that date to run on an emulator, assuming one is ever written.
However, until we see details such as cost, HP really has not committed to
anything people make plans based upon.]

> * No plans to make SSCONFIG publicly available

So license it to trusted third parties. Not making it available just creates
nightmare scenarios for HP's customers.

> * No plans to make MPE/iX 7.0 or 7.5 available on 9x7 hardware

Again, what's the downside? Is this going to cost sales of A- and N-class
systems? I seriously doubt it. It might depress sales of used 9x8 and 9x9
systems, but since HP is not in the used/re-manufactured hardware business,
what does it care? If it wants to wait until Nov 1, 2003, fine. This only
has an upside: goodwill. Plus it might encourage people to move to 7.x,
simplifying support for both HP and third parties. BTW, there is no
technical reason why 7.0 and 7.5 will not run on 9x7 boxes (assuming you do
not have HP-IB devices, but then you can not use 6.5 either). This is just a
guess, but there is probably code placed in the boot loader that examines
the model string of the system and determines whether to proceed. This
prohibition was put in by marketing to attempt to goose sales of new boxes.
We can assume that it did not work well enough since the HP 3000 was EOL'd,
so why not give a gift to those holding 9x7 boxes?

> * No plans to increase the performance level of existing platforms.

To put a more appropriate name on it, this is the now notorious A-class
crippling issue (some N-class machines are also crippled, though not to the
extent of the A-class). There is controversy about this, but it appears, at
least from the naming used, that HP intended to throttle certain systems by
a factor of 1/4. The reality is that in performance tests, it is more like
1/8 when compared with it's uncrippled HP-UX brethren. Again, HP has all
this MBA mumbo jumbo about creating price and value points ad nauseum. What
it really comes down to is whether they are interested in restoring good
will or just want the eke the final few dollars out of a devastated customer
base.

>
> Thanx,
>   Jonathan (Jon) M. Backus, MPE-CSM ~ President
>   Tech Group ~ 15 Catawba Place ~ Hagerstown, MD ~ 21742-6515
>   Email: [log in to unmask] ~ AIM: JMBackus
>   Vmail: 301.988.0614 ~ Fmail: 301.714.1854
>   Web: www.TechGroupMD.com
>

As I said at HPWorld, HP decided to get out of the HP 3000 business, but
refuses to let it go. Let the free market decide if there is a place for MPE
in the future. HP, just let it go. Stop creating red tape, roadblocks,
strings, etc.

John Burke