Ted Ashton wrote (to Winston):
> Sir,
>   We've asked HP for specific details on what it will do to ensure the health
> of the e3000.  We'd (at least some of us) would like to do something specific
> to contribute to that effort.  How can we help/

I'm not speaking for Winston, CSY, or HP.  But I'd like to suggest some things
that anybody can do to contribute to the health of the e3000.

First, take the time to play with POSIX.  There's more to MPE these days than
just COBOL, Image, and VPLUS, and POSIX is truly the foundation that allows
today's MPE to "play well" with other OSes and the Internet.  I know from
HP3000-L that people are still discovering POSIX, and that's good.  But it
would be *great* if everybody had a least a little exposure.

You can start small by exploring HFS files and directories.  HFS gives you much
more flexibility in organizing your data compared to the traditional 3-tier MPE
file.group.account method.  A good way to get started is to run the CBT
training that's already on your machine as a part of FOS -- :XEQ
POSIXCBT.LSN.SYS (note that I'm typing this from memory, so it may not be
exact).

You can then explore a bit deeper by running individual POSIX HPBIN.SYS
utilities directly from the CI.  Need to scan a file's contents?  Try
GREP.HPBIN.SYS.  Need to reformat a file?  Try AWK or SED.HPBIN.SYS.  Need to
search for files based on and/or combinations of attributes?  Try
FIND.HPBIN.SYS.

Your next area of exploration should be the POSIX shell SH.HPBIN.SYS.  Play
with the superior I/O redirection capabilities.  Rejoice in the power of
pipes.  Try writing a simple shell script.

Now you're ready to put POSIX to the test.  The next time you would normally
sit down and write a CI command file or UDC, force yourself to sit down and
write a complete POSIX shell script instead.  I honestly can't remember that
last time I write a CI command file.  I do just about everything in the shell
these days because it's so much more powerful than the CI.

Ready for extra credit?  Install Perl if you want to see the power of the
shell, C, AWK, GREP, and SED all combined into a single language.

If you do these things and come to the conclusion of "Yes, Mark, I BELIEVE IN
THE POWER AND THE GLORY OF POSIX!", read on for how you can use that power to
benefit the platform.

Can one person really make a difference?  Yes -- I like to think that my
personal porting volunteer work has made a difference.  How can *I* make a
difference?  Easy -- come join the opensource revolution and start porting new
applications to MPE.

I am a firm believer that opensource (see http://www.opensource.org for the
opensource philosophy) represents the future of software.  There are literally
thousands of opensource applications just waiting to be ported to MPE.  But
these applications won't port themselves -- they need YOUR help!

Porting is easier than you might think.  Mark Klein has laid the foundation
with his port of the gcc C/C++ compiler.  Lars, myself, and others have
provided fundamental tools like Apache, Perl, Java, servlets, etc.  This all
comprises the rich toolset needed for bringing more applications to MPE.

Most of the hard work has already been done.  Most porting problems already
have solutions, and more solutions are being worked on.  The experienced
porters are standing by to help you get started.  Don't know where to get
started?  Feel free to ask us for advice -- we all have long lists of projects
that exceed our available free time but would be awesome to have on MPE.  In my
opinion and very generally speaking, any application useful or popular on Linux
would be useful to have on MPE.

I estimate that only 0.5% of the mailing list subscribers of HP3000-L are
active porting participants, and just look what we've been able to accomplish
the last couple of years.  Imagine what we could do if we got that
participating percentage up to 1% or even 10%.

The future is what YOU want to make it.  Ask not what MPE can do for you, but
what you can do for MPE!

- Mark B. (speaking only for myself)