HP as an Open Source Software user and contributor
Author: Bruno Cornec
Keywords: Linux,HP,HP-UX,Hewlett,Packard

HP HOWTO: Configuration Guide and Use of HP Products under Linux (Version 0.94)
| Chapter 3. Linux and HP products |

# 3.6. HP as an Open Source Software user and contributor

HP doesn't make a lot of noise in the free software world, even if it is an actor and also a user for its own IT infrastructure. For example, all the incoming mail in HP goes through PostFix servers

    #dig hp.com -t mx | grep MX
    ;;      hp.com, type = MX, class = IN
    hp.com.                 21m28s IN MX    50 cossmtp.hp.com.
    hp.com.                 21m28s IN MX    50 palsmtp.hp.com.
    hp.com.                 21m28s IN MX    20 postal.agilent.com.
    hp.com.                 21m28s IN MX    10 envelope.hp.com.
    hp.com.                 21m28s IN MX    10 letter.hp.com.
    hp.com.                 21m28s IN MX    20 stamp.agilent.com.
    hp.com.                 21m28s IN MX    30 cossmtpx.hp.com.
    hp.com.                 21m28s IN MX    50 atlsmtp.hp.com.
    #telnet envelope.hp.com 25
    Trying 192.151.10.4...
    Connected to envelope.hp.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    220 envelope.hp.com ESMTP Postfix
    QUIT
    221 Bye
    Connection closed by foreign host.
    #telnet letter.hp.com 25
    Trying 192.151.10.3...
    Connected to letter.hp.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    220 letter.hp.com ESMTP Postfix
    QUIT
    221 Bye
    Connection closed by foreign host.
    #telnet postal.agilent.com 25
    Trying 192.6.9.3...
    Connected to postal.agilent.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    220 postal.agilent.com ESMTP Postfix
    QUIT
    221 Bye
    Connection closed by foreign host.

Identically, for its institutional Web server, HP uses Apache as more than 15 millions of other sites.

    #wget -S http://www.hp.com/
    --15:09:45--  http://www.hp.com:80/
               => `index.html.1'
    Connecting to www.hp.com:80... connected!
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
    2 Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 13:12:25 GMT
    3 Server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) mod_fastcgi/2.2.2
    [...]

Agilent (old-HP branch) uses also the free software Perl for CAD as related at http://perl.oreilly.com/news/agilent_0300.html

HP also worked on the improvement of the proxy-cache Squid , as related at http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-142.html

In another domain, HP produces also documents to help convincing to the use of Open Soure Software, as this HP Labs report available on http://lib.hpl.hp.com/techpubs/2001/HPL-2001-233.html

A lot of HP people work on open source projects. They deserve a particular notice because, as in every open source project, their tenacious and constant comportment make these projects alive. Among them:

David Mosberger and Stéphane Eranian

  Port of the Linux kernel on IA-64 http://www.linuxia64.org/.

Grant Grundler, John S. Marvin and Paul Bame

  Major contributor of the Linux kernel port on Pa-Risc http://www.parisc-linux.org/.

Jean Tourrilhes

  Wireless Tools for Linux http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html.

John H. Oleinik and David Suffield

  Projet HP imprimante jet d'encre http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/.

Dann Frazier

  System Imager http://www.systemimager.org.

Peter Mellquist

  SNMP++ http://rosegarden.external.hp.com/snmp++.

Training on HP Linux solutions |  | Solutions and Sizing