PA-RISC and the freedom to choose

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HP and its approach to software

[ Equally importantly, what support HP has provided for open source porting to HP-UX and Tru64 has produced a list of about 480 open source packages for HP-UX -virtually all of which are also available free of charge on both Linux and Solaris.]

When I was working on HP workstations, and needed to get similar functionality to Windoze Office - I was up the creek without a paddle. Whereas Sun was working to get Open Source software working (even buying some - like OpenOffice), HP was doing the Carly shuffle. When I needed a web server - they gave me Zeus. When I needed an up-to-date browser they gave me Netscape 4.x. When I needed a spreadsheet and wordprocessor, they gave me . . . nothing. I even joined Open Office as a developer and tried to port Open Office to HP-UX - just to get what I NEEDED. But alas, no one was interested in helping, and to this day there are no (mainstream) spreadsheets that work on HP-UX (Wingz?). Open Office still doesn't run there.

HP didn't learn from its dead competitor DEC - its the SOFTWARE STUPID! The DEC Alpha was revolutionary - years ahead of the competition, and the OSF1 (later Tru64) was to be the crowning achievement in mach kernel UNIX. But when DEC rolled this out, there was NO UPGRADE PATH for DEC MIPS/Ultrix users - just throw out your old stuff and buy all new stuff was their line of thinking. Well guess what, the DEC users did JUST THAT - they threw out their old DEC boxes and bought Sun and HP! Upward/Backward compatability for software is king and HP hasn't learned that yet . . .

Posted by: Roger Ramjet   Posted on: 03/06/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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