Unix System Laboratories Inc last week said it has started delivering early access versions of Distributed Computing Environment DCE/SVR4 secure code to its OEM customers, calling it the first tangible results of its new-found rapprochement with the Open Software Foundation. Significant as this historic blending of two opposing technologies is, Unix Labs has struck another major chord in claiming that it will attempt to provide its customers with what is as close to a master binary implementation as it can get. With the Distributed Computing Environment now an accepted check-list item for customers, Unix Labs believes it can save an OEM customer a million dollars over three years with its work.

OEM kits

Unix Labs, or rather Open Software Foundation founder Siemens Nixdorf Informationssystemes AG, which did the implementation, is using the Foundation’s DCE 1.0.1 for both the early access code and the OEM kits, which are scheduled to become generally available in January. Despite field reports that this initial Distributed Computing Environment release lacks robustness, Unix Labs expects its OEM customers to ship product based on it to end users in the first half of 1993. A shift to release 1.0.2, which is regarded as closer to being the real product, is expected at the end of the second quarter. The secure Distributed Computing Environment code, encompassing the Remote Procedure Call mechanism, security, cell directory, threads and timing services (to which Unix Labs and Siemens Nixdorf also added X500 mail directory services), still lacks the key distributed file system. Unix Labs must wait for OSF/DCE 1.0.3 for this and is hoping to have something out at the end of 1993 or the beginning of 1994. Sources elsewhere, however, believe it will be 1995 before the Foundation makes this phase mainstream. Although, Unix Labs claims to have improved the quality of the Distributed Computing Environment, it says that OEM customers will look at DCE/System V.4 as a build-or-buy decision, not as a functional added value product, at least with the first release.

Royalties

OEM customers will have to pay Unix Labs $60,000 to get the source code for use in-house, and another $25,000 in sub-licensing fees to ship it to customers, on top of the $150,000 they will have to pay to the Open Software Foundation for a Distributed Computing Environment licence. Both the Foundation and Unix Labs will also get royalties: 5,000 copies of the DCE Executive will net the Foundation $75 a copy and Unix Labs $15. For between 5,000 and 500,000 copies, royalties will be $25 and $5 respectively, for between 500,000 and 1.2m, the royalties are $8 and $1.60, and over 1.2m copies, they are $5 and $1. Security and cell directory royalties will be $400 to the Foundation and $80 to Unix Labs, and global directory royalties are set at $250 and $50 respectively. The hooks that Unix Labs and Siemens Nixdorf have built into System V.4 to accommodate the Distributed Computing Environment will become a standard part of the operating system. DCE/System V.4 is said to cover all required System V.4 libraries, including lib/C with its 500 routines. Unix Labs says these are true thread-safe libraries, and not just coarse-grained, wrapped routines. As a comparison, the Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment source tape has wrappers for fewer than 50 routines. Unix Labs has also provided a customisable systems administration guide and release notes for creating end-user documentation and installation script. DCE/System V.4 uses an Intel Corp 80386 machine as an implementation base, with versions for Sun Microsystems Inc Sparc, MIPS Technologies Inc’s R series and Motorola Inc’s 88000 systems planned. Unix Labs intends putting the Distributed Computing Environment on System V.4.2, enabling it to run over transports other than TCP/IP, such as Open Systems Inetrconnection and Novell Inc’s IPX, integrating it with Tuxedo and DM/System V.4 as well as enhancing performance, debugging and threads support to take advantage of the fine-grained kernel-based threads capabil

ities of System V.4.2 ES/MP.