‘Unix for Workplace’ is definitely not a ‘personality’, in the full Workplace sense, vice-president AIX systems development Donna Van Fleet said last month. Despite the disappearance of ‘Workplace’ from IBM Corp’s vocabulary, the word was much in evidence at IBM’s European AIX press briefing at EuroDisney. In particular, questions about AIX, or any other sort of Unix on the IBM microkernel kept cropping up. We have already reported on a New Unix personality, being developed to sit on top of the IBM microkernel, alongside the OS/2 personality (CI No 2,608). Ms Van Fleet said such a description was completely wrong. Rather than a complete Unix personality, she said, her team will place enough application programming interfaces on top of OS/2 for PowerPC to ensure that SPEC 1170-compliant applications will run. An environment to run Unix applications, yes; a full Unix implementation, no. In no way is it a new Unix, any more than me running WABI on AIX is a new operating system, she said. In concept, if not in detail, the initiative is similar to the plans to add SPEC 1170 standard application programming interfaces to the AS/400 and MVS Open Edition. In fact, she said, the whole strategy can be traced back to Unix developers casting a covetous eye over the AS/400 user base and asking for some of their favourite application programming interfaces to be added. In open session at the briefings, Ms Van Fleet admitted the choice facing developers was either to stick to SPEC 1170, X Window a nd Motif application programming interfaces to get the widest range of systems, or make full use of AIX’s special features. What would I tell developers? Stick to 1170 and X and Motif as far as possible, she said. In summary, Ms Van Fleet argued forcefully that there is no new Unix and therefore no split in IBM’s Unix line. But we worry that no matter what you call it, a SPEC 1170 application environment on OS/2, on AS/400 and on MVS presents developers with alternative targets to develop to, and therefore makes things messy. Meanwhile there is still some obvious disarray in IBM’s internal communications. Though Ms Van Fleet describes the work as a skin of Unix programming interfaces on top of OS/2 for the PowerPC, and maintains the work is being done by her AIX team, Jeff Mason, assistant general manager worldwide marketing at IBM’s RS/6000 division differed. He told our sister publication Unigram.X that the Workplace Unix, as he called it, would be hosted directly on the microkernel, would not need OS/2 to run and was being developed entirely by Lee Reiswig’s Personal Software Products division. It sounds almost as if there are two totally different products …don’t you think?
