With its continued existence now in serious doubt, the Open Software Foundation, Cambridge, Massachusetts is desperately casting around for an elixir to sustain life. Options were discussed at a recent board meeting, and the Foundation is now talking up such options as offering the Common Open Software Environment process a home and signing fee-paying, board-level members from the already-defunct Unix International Inc. The Foundation believes that if it can find a way of accommodating the likes of Sun Microsystems Inc and Novell Inc, then it has a better chance of bringing the whole Common Open Software Environment process home and ensuring its own continuation. With its Motif graphical user interface for Unix and its Distributed Computing Environment its only hit products to date – Digital Equipment Corp is the only user of its OSF/1 Unix – and lay-offs and restructuring looming, it desperately needs a new raison d’etre. Indeed, it has contemplated a range of measures to make it more attractive to potential members, including a new fee structure, a new business model, even a change of name.
Tinkering
But tinkering like this is thought unlikely to be enough to win Sun over despite a rash of recent reports. SunSoft Inc vice-president of marketing Jim Billmaier quashed reports of talks with the Foundation on membership. Moreover, Billmaier and the Foundation’s business area manager for Distributed Computing Environment, Ram Kumar, say there are no plans or intentions to swap the Distributed File System component of Distributed Computing Environment in favour of Sun’s Network File System. SunSoft will talk to anyone about licensing its Open Network Computing, but won’t say whether Software Foundation members have approached it individually. Ways of throwing Sun a bone to join was how Foundation members described ideas floated internally. No lay-offs or other changes will be decided until an Open Software Foundation board meeting that is due to be held later this quarter.
