Helpful programs, still locked away
August 7, 2007
No, we're not referring to the Contributed Software Library, a community asset still available after the 2005 Interex shutdown. More helpful programs are from HP, written for use by the vendor's SE support staff. Some time ago HP said it would be evaluating the release of these diagnostics to the 3000 community.
The effort involves unlocking these programs, which are bundled inside of MPE/iX. HP would have to remove the passwords to give customers and third-party support firms access to these tools. And it appears that the latter group is holding up the diagnostics release. As examples of a passworded utility, some portions of cstm require a password, according to independent support providers, and some offline tools require a password.
HP uses these diagnostics — well, some of them — on HP-UX systems. The vendor has no plans to terminate its HP-UX support, and so competes with the third parties. You get the picture.
Of course, in a recent interview we heard HP doesn't have a firm finale date for its HP 3000 support, either. But Jeff Bandle, the liaison to the OpenMPE board, explains that HP is still looking for a process to get these diagnostics available to the 3000 community.
"We’ve evaluated that, and what it would take to do that," he said at this summer's HP Technology Forum.
"As we do things we have to think of HP as a whole. We have to think about how they impact other parts of HP, like the 9000 business. That all goes into the final decision we’d make about that. Part of our process is working with our HP 9000 internal partners."