At 11:42 AM 5/16/97 -0700, Tracy Johnson wrote:
>>What would happen if HP "opened" up MPE/?? and let go their copyrights much
>>like Unix has been over the last 25 or so years?
>>
>
>Mark Landin Answered:
>
>The most significant effect would be that your next IMAGE/SQL version
would be
>hacked together by a collection of anti-social strung-out Berkeley grad
>students over the course of 3 days.
>
>Is that really the software you want?
>
>(apologies to any strung-out Berkeley grads that might be on the list or
>reading the newsgroup....)
>
>My reply:
>
>Well at least Turbo/Image would get worked on instead of forgotton or put
off!

/soapbox on

In defense of HP, of all the products, TurboIMAGE has undergone a fairly
large series of enhancements over the last 6-7 years, demonstrating HP's
commit to the product.  The most important enhancements this year will include
b-trees, 32-bit ODBC and master dataset expansion. At IPROF HP indicated that
they expected to release these enhancements 3rd calendar quarter. If you're
unaware of all that has happened, simply look at the back cover of SIGIMAGE's
enhancement list, which outlines lists all the changes to IMAGE since 1990.

With this level of continuous enhancement towards meeting the ever-changing
business computing needs HP clearly hasn't 'forgotten or put off' working
on IMAGE.

I think the comment is way out of alignment with reality; and if it was an
attempt at being funny it certainly didn't stike me as appropriate.  I, along
with a number of others on this list have contributed a lot of effort in
working with HP to improve IMAGE and take exception to the remark. If the
product mentioned were one of the various compilers, or even QUERY, then it
would have clearly been more meaningful.  But IMAGE and the IMAGE Lab Team and
those active members working in SIGIMAGE are certainly not deserving of this
type of comment.

/soapbox off

Jerry (SIGIMAGE Chairman Emeritus)