nick_reid@f159.n253.fido.oz.au (Nick Reid) (10/10/90)
Original to: bio_zwbb@jhunix.hcf.jhu.e In a message to All <27 Sep 90 12:40:00> bio_zwbb@jhunix.HCF.JHU.E wrote: bi> Further, they are (quite reasonably, IMHO) loathe to give away their bi> hard-earned secrets to competitors who, with the ROM code in hand, could bi> crank out clones quite cheaply. Just bi> look at what happened to the IBM PC. bi> So, it makes perfectly good business sense for HP to withhold their code bi> and development tools. bi> it is a little silly that we have to bi> depend on good folk like Gariepy and Grevelle to "reverse engineer" the bi> system for us, when all the info we need resides in a set of manuals and bi> some computer files in Corvallis. bi> It would be *great* if HP would sell a bi> software developer's package, consisting of the commented ROM code and bi> whatever development tools they have on hand. But doing so would make it bi> easy for the clone-makers to undercut bi> HP's market position, I would guess, bi> so this seems bloody unlikely. Perhaps there are legal and/or technical bi> means by which HP could release the information *and* protect their bi> position, but I'm neither a lawyer nor bi> an EE, so I can't say. I just hope bi> that people at HP are at least asking themselves these questions. It's actually simpler than you suppose. _In_principle_ HP are generally quite happy to make the information you seek available (most of what they really need to protect being covered by patent anyway) as they did with the HP-71, provided that it does not COST them an arm and a leg. However and in fact, while it is true that all the information you want to see released is indeed sitting on workstations in HP's Corvallis plant, it is also true that the cost of extracting it from their development system and packaging it into a defined and catalog-priced product that will be meaningful and useful to outside developers is VERY high, and further, once it is an HP product and thus requiring of "HP support", the "support" costs get to be ASTRONOMICAL. Basically, what you want just costs so much to produce and support that there is no way the relatively small market for it would be able to return those costs. HP's natural commercial response, therefore, is not to produce it. However, their alternative response, i.e. to make the information available in other, less costly ways (e.g. via HP staff who can do partial formatting of the raw data for publication outside of HP's cost structure, or via user groups, etc, etc) proceeds apace..... I agree, all this unnecessary reverse engineering is a total pain in the neck, so if you could only think of a way to increase the number of folk who would pay for HP to release the material formally, up to, say, around even just a quarter of those who purchase the actual calculator, I think we'd have the problem licked but good. nick.reid@f159.n253.z2.fidonet.org --- XRS 3.40+ * Origin: No Zone - London UK - QMX - @FidoNet (Quick 2:253/159.2)