HP gives ball to third parties
January 29, 2009
As HP leaves the baseball field that is the 3000 community, it’s handing the ball over at the pitcher’s mound to some well-known, respected or dedicated third parties. These independent companies will dish out what the post-2010 user needs.
HP has been negotiating license agreements for hosting HP-written programs in the Jazz lineup of 3000 utilities, as well as the HP 3000 documentation. The vendor announced that Speedware and Client Systems have become HP licensees of 3000 materials from docs.hp.com and HP’s Jazz content.
Jennie Hou of HP says the vendor only recognizes a customer’s right to personal use of HP’s Jazz programs. HP says it has copyrights associated with HP-created Jazz programs. Re-hosting these Jazz files will require an HP license.
“We are talking to third-party providers that are interested in hosting some of the HP Jazz content on their servers,” she said. “In this scenario, [the content] is no longer a personal download for personal use anymore. Therefore, a license agreement to post this set of information is required, and it is a standard practice.”
In addition to the docs and the Jazz programs, Speedware is also hosting the Web-based migration training classes that have been offered on HP’s sites. HP is working to take the Web classes off the HP site now and expects the transfer to Speedware’s site to take place shortly. HP would like to have no gap between availability on HP’s site and the Speedware site.
HP believes that the Jazz contents will be best served to the community from multiple licensees. “If there are multiple places where our user community can access the HP e3000 materials, I think it’s beneficial to the community,” Hou said. HP does not disclose licensing terms, she added.
But an HP license agreement need not carry a cost. That condition, should it turn out to be part of the Jazz agreement, would make it more possible for OpenMPE to host HP’s Jazz programs, along with the community-contributed software off Jazz.
Other Jazz, migration and documentation licensees will be announced as agreements are concluded. While HP said that it wants to provide the migration classes to multiple companies, it would not comment on any other companies or organizations it contacted to adopt and host the migration materials. As an example of non-class materials, one such training resource is a MPE-to-Unix command converter lookup program which has been hosted on HP’s site.
The Web-based cross reference utility has been available to any HP 3000 customer at no charge up to now. HP offered those Web-based MPE-to-Unix classes for a fee — but the vendor introduced a coupon, which never expired, that the community used to take the migration classes for free.