Off with friends celebrating my 49th birthday.  By this time, I had too
much time, too much money, had lost much of my obsession with computer
technology, and lost my faith in HP.  I had been told over a year before
that it was coming, and didn't hear about the official announcement until
much later.  It wasn't until I had a long afternoon discussion with Wirt
that I comprehended the importance of the day, and the missed opportunity
to have done anything about it.  In hindsight, the spirit that allowed
HP3000 to grow and thrive in an IT environment that was dominated by IBM
(80% of both hardware and software market shares) was lost with the embrace
of the new "IBM", Microsoft, who were able to take shady business practices
to monopolize a market to new lows.

The HP3000/MPE could have evolved into the premiere RAD (Rapid Application
Development) platform for small to enterprise class business applications
using a Linux kernel and drivers, one of the GUIs, and an open source
database.  Integration with Open (now Libre) Office, would have been icing
on the cake.  I think there was a good chance to have beaten Oracle, had HP
started down that track in the late nineties.  But, I have to admit now,
Wirt was right, 2001 was the last possible year that could have been
successful.

Occasionally and nostalgically lurking, Pete

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *