New MPE 8.0 includes cutting-edge remotes
April 1, 2014
Almost 10 years after the last update to MPE/iX -- the PowerPatch 2 of release 7.5 -- a new version of the operating system is emerging. What's being called MPE/iX 8.0 by the World OS ID board has begun to surface from the rogue collective of open source coders known as ReBoot.me, which has a website based in Macedonia.
It's not known as this point how ReBoot.me got its hands on MPE/iX source code, but the modifications to the OS appeared to be demonstrated on an HP L-Class server. The new version was captured in a video released for a few hours on YouTube, but removed from North American, Asian, African, European and all Middle Eastern YouTube users. This 8.0 MPE/iX can still be viewed in a demo from viewers in the Bahamas, or any location that employs the domain .bs.
The secrecy appears to stem from some first-ever features on any operating system. Much like the groundbreaking memory space allocation of MPE/XL, the 8.0 release -- ReBoot.me calls it New MPE -- supports cloud hang time, self-repairing line breaks, and the manipulation of drone clusters. Seynor Blachboxe, the code-named spokesperson for the open sourcers, said the drone support was a late addition, one that helped fund the entire project.
The cloud hang time feature automates and monitors any service interruptions that may be caused by meterological impacts, according to the ReBoot team. The New MPE does a constant rebuild of its accounts structure while handling intensive IO requests, making the software able to restore to its latest stateless image in a matter of millseconds during an interruption.
"You won't be able to see the downtime, and you won't be able to see the drones, either," Blachboxe said on the YouTube video. "This entire release is really about not seeing anything new that's happening within MPE." Licensing battles look like they may be highly visible, however, since ReBoot was not among the eight licensed owners of the MPE/iX source code released during 2010.
The open sourcers appeared to be unfazed by the prospect of battling Hewlett-Packard over rights to a product it no longer sells or supports. Citing a list of legal projects and management efforts tied to more critical needs for the vendor, the coding group said it doesn't expect a challenge that will be recognized in its sovereign nations.
"Winning that lawsuit wouldn't contribute enough to HP's bottom line to make their investors happy with the legal expense," Blachboxe said.
Eager beta testers managed to download a handful of builds for the New MPE during the hours that the YouTube video was first visible. These releases could only be activated -- by use of an HP 792 terminal attached to an HP Cloud partition -- during the rolling 24 hour period of 04-01-14, as recognized in the vicinity of coordinates -49.591071, 69.497378, (click on map at right for detail) using the UTC +5:30 as a base. A beta-test version of 8.0 includes the first access to GPS coordinates, to locate a user's system and authorize the download, Blachboxe explained.
"If a user can't figure that out, they won't be of the caliber of computer professional we'd like to test this release," he said. "It's New MPE, after all."