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Mr. Shankland,

I would like to thank you for your article, and appreciate reading somewhat
more favorable press on the 3000. I do not know how many subscribers to the
HP 3000 listserv recognized your name from your 'HP takes new tack on
e-commerce' article from just last week.

I am sorry that the postings on the 3000 listserv were not somewhat more
favorable, and so am posting this there as well. I do not think that the
responses I have read is how we encourage awareness of our platform.

There are some buzzwords as well as some hot points in your article. I
appreciated reading about Apache in some detail, all accurate. It, with
SAMBA, was 'grass roots', ported by others, but HP saw the sense in
negotiating their adoption, while the other porters will continue their work
as well on the absolute latest versions available (HP is not known for huge
public beta tests). And the secure web console is new news, still being
discussed on the list. I also appreciated the indirect reference to JDBC as
Java access to IMAGE/SQL. Frankly, although I am in interested in seeing it
happen, I had forgotten about LDAP.

I would have preferred the buzzword 'high availability' over robust, but I
don't think that anyone will say that we are not robust. And resurrect seems
a little strong; revival or recommitment seem closer to it, since we were
never dead. Sales of the 3000 are higher today, with more sold in the
eighteen month period after HP started announcing their plans than in the
previous five years. As for the decades-old lineage, well, that is our
legacy, one that we are proud of, and although we know our OS to be as open
as POSIX.2 it complies with, we agree that proprietary need not be a bad
word (it hasn't hurt the AS/400). The first binary that was compiled on an
HP 3000 twenty six years ago will still run on the newest, high-end HP 3000
available today, albeit it in compatibility mode, despite the profound
growth of the hardware and software, because of HP's commitment to forward
compatibility.

Greg Stigers
CGI Information Systems and Management Consultants, Inc.
insert std disclaimers