Donnalyn Frey is president of Frey Communications. She is spokesperson for the USENIX Association and can be reached at P.O. Box 2051, Fairfax, VA 22031-0051.
In May 17, 1988, the major players in the Unix community changed; AT&T was suddenly no longer the only important voice in Unix. AT&T owns the Unix operating system, but now the Open Software Foundation, the voice of several computer firms, is playing a role in the Unix community. The trouble is, though, that no one knows what the new voice is going to say or who is going to listen.
This situation started early in 1988 when AT&T, stung by its failure to penetrate the Unix workstation market, concluded an agreement with Sun Microsystems, of Mountain View, Calif. Sun is a young company with the dominant hold on the Unix workstation market. Sun agreed that AT&T could purchase up to 20 percent of Sun stock, at a premium. AT&T would have a seat on the Sun board of directors, and most important, Sun and AT&T would combine their versions of the Unix operating system. AT&T would still own Unix, but Sun and AT&T would work together on future releases. The new Unix operating system that will be released by AT&T will be created from System V, Release 3 (the latest version of the AT&T Unix operating system), SunOS (the Sun operating system), and Berkeley 4.3BSD (a version of Unix created by the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley). SunOS was originally based on the 4.2BSD code, known for its networking capabilities, and has been upgraded to 4.3BSD. The new AT&T operating system will be called System V, Release 4, and is scheduled for a mid-1989 release.
What the agreement between Sun and AT&T meant was that Sun, a workstation manufacturer, would be working on the new AT&T Unix operating system and thus would have access to it before any other Unix computer manufacturer. Many vendors believed that Sun would have the advantage over other manufacturers because it could write and release new applications that took advantage of the newest Unix release before anyone else could.
AT&T tried to allay these fears by meeting with the other computer and workstation manufacturers. In those meetings, AT&T stated that it would keep the manufacturers apprised of work on the new operating system so that no one would be left behind. But the companies couldn't look at the newest operating system until just before it was released, months after Sun had already worked on it. These meetings did little to allay the fears. A few companies, such as Unisys, agreed to work with Sun and AT&T. But most of the other companies were still concerned.
These companies, including Digital Equipment Corp., MIPS, Prime Computer, and several others, held meetings among themselves to discuss the situation. Their first meeting, held at the Hamilton Street location of one of the attendees, eventually led to the formation of the Hamilton Group.
The Hamilton Group held several discussions. Many believed that the AT&T/ Sun agreement threatened the future of their companies. AT&T licenses Unix to companies that produce computers that run Unix. The companies can then create their proprietary products, within some AT&T license limitations. This has led to DEC's Ultrix, Sequent Computer's Dynix, and other forms of Unix. But first the companies have to see the Unix source code before they can write their own code. The new AT&T/Sun agreement has Sun and AT&T working together on the newest version of Unix, with Sun able to write new applications months before any of its competitors.
The Hamilton Group considered several alternative strategies, including writing its own Unix, free of licensed AT&T code. There was considerable concern among the group over splitting the Unix market and creating confusion. There are already two major forms of Unix the AT&T System V version and the University of California BSD version. The BSD version was licensed by AT&T; however, it has been split from AT&T for many years. The BSD version of Unix contains many innovations not found in AT&T Unix. System V is often preferred by businesses, with BSD preferred by research firms and universities. Xenix, the most popular version of Unix for PCs, is based on System V.
After a few months of meetings, several members of the Hamilton Group, with some other computer companies, decided to form the Open Software Foundation (OSF). Even though they were aware that this might confuse the Unix market, they believed the OSF would eventually bring a sense of order to it.
The OSF was created on May 17, 1988, by seven sponsors. Each sponsor pledged $4.5 million per year over three years for the fledgling organization, and each sponsor would have a seat on the board of directors. The original seven sponsors were IBM, Digital Equipment, Apollo Computer, Nixdorf Computer AG, Groupe Bull, Hewlett Packard, and Siemens AG. AT&T was invited to join the organization, but it declined.
Shortly after its formation, the OSF began running full-page advertisements in the trade press announcing its existence. An OSF advertisement appearing in Mrs Week on May 30, 1988, read: "A truly open software environment would allow business to harness the power of computers, regardless of their size or manufacturer. That's why we have formed the Open Software Foundation - to make this environment a reality." The advertisement went on to list the principles of the OSF:
Although the advertisements announced the principles of the OSF, the Unix community was still confused and concerned. Many people wanted to know what the OSF was really about, behind all the announcements and photographs of smiling CEOs.
The federal government was especially concerned. Approximately 70 percent of all government requests for proposals (RFPs) on new data-processing systems contained a requirement for the Unix operating system. The government had been requesting System V compatibility. Would the OSF confuse government procurement of Unix systems? Would the government again be drawn into lawsuits over Unix specifications, as happened when DEC challenged a requirement for System V compatibility? The federal government specified Unix because it wanted a portable operating system for the majority of its computers. Would OSF damage this portability?
The birth of the OSF brought hundreds of questions to mind for developers, research organizations, universities, businesses, and the federal government. What did the OSF mean? What was the OSF going to do? What would AT&T do? What did it mean for users planning to purchase Unix systems? Should developers go with AT&T/Sun Unix or wait for any OSF offering? Answers to these questions were not being provided by anyone, and speculation was rampant in the trade press and in the hallways and conference rooms of countless organizations.
Many Unix observers found it interesting that DEC and IBM had joined in the founding of the OSF. DEC has been considered hostile to Unix for many years, and has always promoted its proprietary VMS operating system. The president of DEC, Ken Olsen, recently called Unix portability "snake oil," causing considerable furor in the community. Approximately 20 percent of DEC's market, however, is Ultrix (Unix). This market is growing and DEC may be responding to user demands for Unix. DEC has announced that it will retain its proprietary Ultrix system, but it will be in compliance with OSF standards. These standards, however, had not been announced at the time of DEC's statement.
IBM has similarly been considered hostile to Unix, preferring to market its own operating system. Many people wanted to know if the OSF was designed to confuse the Unix market in order to give DEC and IBM more time to promote their proprietary operating systems. The wave of the future seemed to be Unix, but if IBM didn't want that to happen, could it stop it?
Another major concern of the Unix community was IBM's reported insistence that it would join the OSF only if its Unix operating system, AIX, was used as the base of any OSF operating system offering. IBM has minimal experience in the Unix market --in fact it contracted out the initial work on AIX. There was considerable concern that any OSF product based on AIX would not be robust enough for market acceptance.
There was also concern that the OSF would never produce anything. The OSF had stated the intention of bringing its first product to market within two years. After waiting two years, the Unix community might find nothing available from the OSF or only an unusable product. A product produced by committee is often useless, especially when members of the committee have differing interests. There was considerable concern that the OSF's only product would be two years of confusion in the Unix market.
Next, the whole question of standards was raised. Because AT&T licenses Unix to many computer manufacturers and software firms, each of which may rewrite parts of the operating system and use it as the firm's proprietary Unix offering. The only requirement is that the company pay the appropriate license royalties to AT&T. Consequently, many different versions of Unix are available. Berkeley 4.3BSD is different from Sun's SunOS, which is different from Sequent's Dynix, which is different from DEC's Ultrix, and so on.
Unix users and developers have recently been working to implement standards in the Unix industry to ensure that applications written for one form of Unix will run on other forms. The Unix operating system will then be truly portable.
The largest standards effort is the IEEE P1003.1 POSIX standard, an effort by the IEEE to create a basic standard Unix. The acronym POSIX stands for Portable Operating System Interface X, with the X added to make the title end in IX, as in Unix. The P1003.1 committee has written a standard detailing what every Unix system should include. This standard does not try to make all forms of Unix identical, merely able to run common applications among themselves, which is the goal of a portable system.
Unix System V Open Systems Foundation
AT&T IBM
Sun Micro Systems DEC
Unisys Hewlett-Packard
Motorola Nixdorf
Toshiba Siemens
Prime Hitachi
Olivetti Phillips
Amdahl Silicon Graphics
Control Data Group Bull
Gould Apollo Computer
ICL National Semi
NCR AMD
Fujitsu Pacific Bell
The POSIX standard has, at its core, the AT&T System V Interface Definition (SVID), a Unix standard AT&T was promoting. It also contains requirements based on the Berkeley 4.3BSD operating system, among others. The standard, several years in the making, is supported by the Unix industry, technical associations, the OSF, and the federal government and was approved by IEEE on August 22, 1988.
Systems that are POSIX compatible must pass a test suite of programs to prove their adherence to the standard. Most forms of Unix are already in compliance with most of the POSIX requirements. POSIX addresses only the basic Unix operating system, and it contains many options. It will not solve all incompatibility problems, but it will help.
The approval of POSIX helps to clarity the turbulent Unix market. AT&T, the OSF, and dozens of computer hardware and software firms support POSIX. Unix has a basic standard to follow. Someone charged with purchasing a Unix system does not have to choose between AT&T Unix or wait to see if there will be an OSF Unix. Users can specify POSIX compliant Unix and will have a Unix system that can run applications from any number of manufacturers. The approval of the POSIx standard also frees users from reliance on a single hardware vendor. With POSIX, a system can be created with computers manufactured by several vendors.
Developers also benefit from the POSIX standard because they know what their basic Unix offerings should include for market acceptance. Developers may enhance their products within the AT&T and POSIX guidelines, but they will still be POSIX compatible.
The standard is also of importance to the federal government. The FIPS-POSIX (Federal Information Processing Standard-POSIX) standard, the government form of POSIX written by the National Bureau of Standards and Technology, was approved by the Department of Commerce on August 31, 1988. Unix suppliers have nine months to bring their systems into compliance with POSIX. Federal RFPs can now specify FIPS-POSIX for the as in Unix. The P1003.1 committee has written a standard detailing what every Unix system should include. This standard does not try to make all forms of Unix identical, merely able to run common applications among themselves, which is the goal of a portable system. standard Unix operating system. The federal government is assured of basically compatible Unix systems, no matter what happens in the AT&T/OSF situation. This version of FIPS-POSIX is based on the earlier POSIX standard, rejected by the IEEE P1003.1 committee. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is reviewing the POSIX standard with the intention of bringing the FIPS-POSIX standard into line with the current P1003.1 POSIX standard.
Even with the approval of POSIX, the Unix community is still unsettled. The AT&T/OSF situation continues to confuse the market. The OSF has been adding new members. Companies have been invited to join the OSF as members at a cost of $25,000 annually for profit-making corporations and $5,000 for nonprofit corporations. Many companies and a few universities have joined OSF, including Relational Technologies, Adobe Systems, Altos Computer Systems, Mitre Corporation, Stratus Computers, Toshiba America, Tecsell, Cornell University, Locus Computing, National Semiconductor, Phoenix Technologies, Concurrent Computer, Data Logic Ltd., Interactive Systems, Interfirm Graphics Systems, Mentor Graphics, the University of Southern California, 88open Consortium Ltd., Advanced Micro Devices, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Micom Interlan, Norsk Data A.S., Pacific Bell, Silicon Graphics, Stanford University, The Swedish Telecom Group, Wang Laboratories, Computer Consoles, Data General, Informix Software, and Landmark Graphics. Other companies have expressed interest in joining.
In addition, OSF has added a new sponsor to the original sponsors. The new sponsor is Hitachi Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan. The OSF had originally stated that it would accept members, but not new sponsors. However, Henry Crouse, president of OSF, believed that the strategic location of Hitachi in Japan would enhance the acceptance of OSF products in Japan.
The OSF itself is also joining organizations. It recently joined the USENIX Association, the technical and professional association of Unix users, at the association's semiannual technical conference in June 1988. The OSF held an information meeting at the USENIX Association conference in San Francisco to allow conference attendees to talk with the director of research, Ira Goldstein; director of development John Paul; director of strategic development, Alex Morrow. Ira Goldstein, at the time of the meeting, was the manager of research and development of Hewlett-Packard's technical systems sector, on loan to OSF. He is now the permanent vice-president of research and development at OSF. John Paul is the vice-president and director of software development for Nixdorf Computer, also on loan to the OSF Alex Morrow is the director of strategic alliances, membership recruitment, and international communications. He is on loan to the OSF from IBM technical computing systems, where he is a manager of systems architecture and development. This meeting was the first time, and to date the only time, the OSF management team had met with technical Unix users and developers.
During the information meeting with the USENIX Association conference attendees, Goldstein, Paul, and Morrow provided general information on the goals of the OSF and how these goals would be achieved. A question-and-answer period followed the presentation. Answers to some of the more technical questions were not provided by the speakers, however.
Many conference attendees left the meeting with the belief that the OSF was not doing anything concrete and that no plans or schedules were available. This meeting was held, however, only six weeks after the formation of the Open Software Foundation.
Another concern of conference attendees was that all the OSF managers were on loan from sponsor companies. Attendees were unsure if the OSF had any technical employees. Now, several months later, the foundation is recruiting technical personnel, but many in the community are reluctant to join the OSF because potential employees are unsure of what they would be working on, what the goals would be, and what the future holds for their employer.
The OSF has made some statements about how it expects to be working. It expects to have several hundred employees, including technical staff. It plans to foster research by providing grants to universities. It is also requesting technologies from both industry and university sources, and these technologies are expected to make up any OSF product offering.
The first request for technology (RFT) was issued by the OSF on July 18, 1988. The RFT was for a graphical user interface technology to be incorporated into the OSF User Environment Component of the Application Environment Specification. Several companies responded, UNIX vs. UNIX including AT&T and Sun, which submitted their Open Look interface.
The OSF is planning to establish a user interface standard to allow applications to be ported easily from different platforms and to encourage appropriate levels of user interface consistency between applications. The RFT requires that interfaces submitted meet the following criteria:
The OSF's RFT has provoked another concern among vendors and users in the Unix industry. The RFT is open to any company or university. Consequently, the OSF's final product could be constructed of pieces from several different sources, which brings up licensing concerns. Any Unix product from the OSF will have an AT&T license, as AT&T owns Unix. OSF has purchased an IBM AIX license and has stated that it will use AIX as the base of its operating system offering. Another license will be required by the university or company that contributes the graphical user interface. If other RFTs are issued, as expected, other licenses will be required. All these licenses could add up to a substantial sum of money for users. The hodgepodge of license terms could be a constraint on further innovation in the Unix operating system for companies licensing the OSF product.
Licensing problems were first apparent in the Unix community with the release of AT&T's System V, Release 3, several years ago. In the past, AT&T had put few licensing restrictions on its licensees, including the earlier System V, Release 2, system. The System V, Release 3, Unix license contained significant constraints, however. AT&T was trying to gain more control over Unix and limited how licensees could rewrite or enhance Unix for their product offerings. AT&T also specified that the Unix products must be able to pass an AT&T test suite. Bugs have been reported in the AT&T test suite, however, that limit the ability of Unix variations to pass the tests. Many companies are refusing to purchase System V, Release 3, and are still using Release 2.
The OSF came up against this problem when it purchased an AT&T Unix operating system license for System V, Release 3. It is aware, however, that many companies will not purchase a product with a Release 3 license. The OSF is currently unsure as to how it will handle this problem when it has a product ready for market.
AT&T has recently chosen to spin off its Unix operating system into a separate division of AT&T. The OSF was founded by companies concerned that AT&T and Sun would have complete control over Unix. AT&T, in creating this separate division, may deflect the fears that AT&T will have complete control over Unix and dictate product offerings to the companies and universities offering Unix as a product.
AT&T has also announced another major change. On October 18, 1988, AT&T announced for formation of a new group to guide AT&T System V Unix. Talks with OSF had broken down over OSF's requirement that their offering be based on IBM's AIX, a position unacceptable to AT&T. The new group of AT&T supporters, including several major companies, is expected to offer guidance to AT&T in software development and licensing terms. No plans for a Unix separation from AT&T have been announced as yet, however.
AT&T is now licensing the name Unix for corporate versions of the operating system, so companies can license the name for their versions of Unix. In the case of Unix for the PC market, AT&T and Microsoft have merged AT&T's System V, Release 3, and Microsoft's Xenix into a single PC Unix operating system. The new system is called Unix SystemV/386 and was released to continue AT&T's efforts to create a standard Unix. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) release of its newest version of Unix will be named SCO Unix System V/386 and is set for a mid-1989 release.
AT&T has stated that it plans to continue licensing the name Unix to other companies. This additional income would allow AT&T to consider relinquishing some of its control over Unix in order to promote a more unified Unix product.
AT&T has stated that it wishes to see a single Unix standard. Discussions between AT&T and the OSF may produce an agreement by the end of this year. Sun has also expressed interest in creating a single, unified Unix operating system and is also considering working with the OSF to create a single OSF and AT&T/Sun standard Unix.
The OSF has made participation in the development of future Unix releases a condition of any AT&T/OSF agreement. If an agreement is reached and a single Unix operating system is created, with both the OSF and AT&T distributing it, both organizations would receive licensing fees from the distribution. The Open Software Foundation, whether it produces a product or not, may in the long run help the Unix market. It may eventually push AT&T into creating a single Unix operating system standard that does not inhibit the ability of companies to enhance their own versions of Unix. AT&T and Sun were originally planning to create a standard Unix. It may be that a single Unix is created but that AT&T, Sun, and the sponsors and members of the OSF may decide on control of development.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the OSF really does help the Unix market. If the OSF and AT&T/Sun cannot come to an agreement, the market may remain split with several major forms of Unix, including AT&T, OSF, and Berkeley.
Users and developers, to help themselves during this transition period, have the IEEE POSIX standard to guide them. Right now, though, the community is watching and waiting to see how the situation unfolds over the next two years.