> Personally I never had the opportunity to meet Winston.  I
> don't believe he 'killed' MPE.

Winston did not kill MPE.  It died on its own for many reasons. Winston
was realistic enough, brave enough, and cared for his customers enough
to admit it publicly, and hopefully in time for many customers to
figure out what to do next.  However, the decisions that led to the
Nov 14 announcement came solely from within CSY.

> It was the 'upper crust' at HP who decided to 'glean' off the
> revenue from the 3000 boxes and apply it to the latest 'Bill
> Gates' and
> others, buzz words.  Like 'unix', 'nt', 'windows 2xxx', etc. etc.

Everything that I've heard says this is not correct.  Higher level
HP management (above Winston) had little input into this decision.
It is true that historically the 3000 product line funded (at least
in part) HP-UX development.  But I think the 9000 product line passed
us many years ago in terms of returning profit to HP.

> By transferring funding away from R&D for MPE/ix on the IA-64
> chip Winston
> had no choice, he was between a rock and a hard spot.

I think our R&D funding model is simple and is based in part on
how much revenue is generated by our product.
...

> The 3000 had a bright future but when the money is taken away
> from you, CSY, you can't develop it's O/S.  It takes dollars and
> quality people to write good code when it comes to the O/S side
> of things.

I agree, but I am not sure how bright the future of the 3000 was,
even if CSY had more funding.  The "market", didn't understand or
didn't value the benefits of the 3000 to pay the extra money.

Just my thoughts,
 Jeff Vance, CSY

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