NewOrg – an ugly disingenuous name for the still-secret consortium-in-formation that the Common Open Software Environment proponents have started pulling together over the last few months as a place to house their aspirations – is reportedly beginning to shape up. Rumours say perhaps a dozen companies have pledged to join, while a bunch are still banging on the door. As well as SunSoft Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp, NewOrg’s reputed fathers, other names being bandied about include NCR Corp, Unisys Corp, Novell Inc, Fujitsu Ltd, Hitachi Ltd, Santa Cruz Operation Inc and ICL Plc. Digital Equipment Corp is also in the line-up. But DEC – understandably because of its unflagging committment to OSF/1 – reportedly wants the assets of the Open Software Foundation brought into the new development organisation. How this can be done without NewOrg also inheriting such Foundation liabilities as the lingering multimillion anti-trust suit lodged against it by Addamax Corp back in April 1991, remains to be seen. The Software Foundation’s other key founders, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, are believed to want those assets rolled into NewOrg as well. If it can be done, the Foundation and its one-time rival Unix International, might be gently put to sleep or rather integrated into the new consortium and their chiefs, Dave Tory and Peter Cunningham, dispatched to greener pastures. Observers reason that an answer might lie with the quasi-independent OSF Research Institute, but it is not clear the services of its chief, Ira Goldstein, will be needed any longer either.
