It’s not clear yet what resources they will be directing in the OpenMPE movement, but at least the volunteers who are working to carry MPE beyond HP’s end of support deadline have a board of directors to turn toward. OpenMPE Inc, founded as a corporation by Tech Group president Jon Backus, elected eight directors on an online ballot and was trying to draft a ninth from the HP 3000 division in a write-in section of the ballot. The voting took place on the Internet January 7-8 and included nominees from outside the US. The ballot had two designated seats each for end-users, application vendors, consultants and utility vendors. Fifteen nominees were in the running for the eight places, including some well-known and forward-looking advocates for the 3000 way of computing.

The winners of the balloting were end users Ted Ashton (Southern Adventist University) and Ken Sletten (SIG IMAGE/SQL Chairman and a developer at the US Navy’s Undersea Warfare facility in Washington state); consultants Backus and Christian Lheureux (of French vendor APPIC); 3000 application vendors John Marrah (President of Ecometry) and Chris Miller (VP of Genesis Total Solutions); and utilities vendors Birket Foster (president of MB Foster Associates and SIGSoftVend Chairman) and Mark Klein (of DIS International, and ORBiT’s most recent VP of Technology). Backus reported that the HP board seat went to Jeff Vance of HP's CSY division.

The organization was also picking up essential resources for its mission of creating an MPE that can function well beyond HP’s timetable for the operating system. Minisoft’s Doug Greenup said his company would donate middleware and connectivity tools, as well as compilers and other utilities. “We also have MPE OS licenses ‘laying’ around we would be happy to give to the new OpenMPE,” Greenup said. The organization got a donation of a Series 937RX from www.hptraderonline.com, hardware support for the system from Ideal Computer Services, and an offer of CE support from a former HP CE, Paul Courry.