Chairman Birket Foster used about 20 minutes of the latest CAMUS user group meeting to update the OpenMPE membership offerings. Invent3k will be the first asset to generate money for the group, but access won’t cost much more than the free trial membership of 2010. In 2011, a $99 per year fee will get you access to working with Invent3k. (A DR version of the system runs at Measurement Specialties’ 3000 shop, managed by OpenMPE director Tracy Johnson.)

“You’ll have an Invent3k box where you can log on and develop and test things,” Foster said of the system maintained by The Support Group’s David Floyd and Johnson. “You can use it to train, so in your succession plan you can show a person how to log on and manage an HP 3000, without affecting your own production machine,” he offered as an example.

The server that’s up and running, with a fresh master password, came from HP’s labs by way of a Client Systems 3000 contribution. This Series 959 4-way arrived with HP’s name for it labeled on the rear access panel. The yellow sticker reads MPESOURC. Those eight letters — it’s an MPE system, after all, and is so limited to those characters — proves to TSG’s founder Terry Floyd that this is the HP Labs server where the 3000′s source code once lived and grew.Those millions of lines of code have been wiped off the 54GB of SureStore disk arrays attached to MPESOURC. HP shipped out major parts of that code to eight licensees this year, an accomplishment that OpenMPE takes a reasonable share of credit for sparking. But the whole MPE/iX enchilada once coursed through the same PA-RISC processors and memory which just started serving OpenMPE and its members. Another part of the day’s news was an affordable offer to use Invent3k during 2011 and beyond.

And the fact that Invent3k, fully patched up on the 7.5 level of MPE/iX, once housed the source code that drives the heartbeat of 3000s worldwide? If you’ve got any sense of history at all — and many homesteaders do — you might sign up for the $99 plan just to tap the resources of the very same machine where MPE grew up into its ultimate version at HP.

OpenMPE’s has a link to its PayPal account posted up at its website to collect these $99 memberships. Before too long the user-built utilities of the Contributed Software Library, just arrived at the TSG datacenter this week, will also be online. The hardware may be legacy-grade, and the software will remain stable and static. But those are benefits of working with a solution handed down from its creators to curators, for extend the use of the 3000 for the community.

A need for a comprehensive and realistic business plan was discussed in BOD meetings for years. None has been produced. A proper business plan is vital for the success of any real corporation. The OpenMPE organization is not a business corporation. There are no products, no employees, no corporate facility, or steady income stream. It is essentially a volunteer users group. The original advocacy purpose of the organization is now gone due to the abandonment of the HP3000 and any liaison to the group by Hewlett Packard.

Several major tasks undertaken by the group include acquiring the source code for the MPE/iX operating system, as well as providing an HP3000 server to host the Invent3k environment, the Contributed Software Library, and the Interex Conference Proceedings. A donated server hasn’t hosted the items listed above as promised by Matt Perdue several years ago.

The source code has been acquired from HP, but only in a read-only format. Therefore, a new build of the operating system can’t be accomplished. So, any enhancements and fixes have to be done via patches.

The last BOD minutes posted on their web site is June 24, 2010. That was two months ago. That leads one to think that no meetings were held by the BOD. Looking at a few of the existing minutes on the group’s web site show minutes that are void of any real content. There aren’t any notes about why so many BOD members have resigned over the last year. There must not be any agenda for the BOD meetings, since that would normally be reflected in the minutes. So, I conclude that when BOD meetings were held, nothing was accomplished.

When I was Treasurer of the BOD, I gave a financial report at each meeting, kept the BOD members up to date on the group’s bank statements and tax status, and the information was published in the minutes. Since I don’t see any traces of that continuing in the minutes after I left the BOD, I assume that no financial information is being relayed to the user community by the current treasurer. This is not the way to run an organization.

Because of these issues, it appears that there is no future for the organization. Unless there is a radical change in the way the group is organized and managed, there is no hope of success. It must be remade into a full blown corporation with a realistic business plan, focus on proper organization and management, profit producing products, employees, and proper legal status. There seems to be a total lack of leadership by the BOD.

In conclusion, I feel that the OpenMPE organization should be dissolved by the end of the year 2010. All assets acquired from Hewlett Packard and Client Systems should be returned to them. Any money left should be given back to the persons who made loans to the group. It is time to close the doors.

CDR Paul Edwards USNR Ret.

OpenMPE Director 2003-2008

You’ll be seeing changes to the main OpenMPE Web site over the next several months. We want to focus on what is most useful to the community with what we offer. Most importantly, we are working to connect with HP 3000 users who rely on the system for the years to come.

Welcome to the new world. We’ll update you soon on what’s worthy of your exploration.