As expected, the Open Software Foundation announced at its fifth members’ meeting in Boston last week that it would be incorporating the Mach 2.5 kernel, parallel file system and TCP/IP from Encore Computer Corp, and would now be taking only 800,000 lines of AIX code from IBM, mostly the commands and libraries. The shift to Encore’s implementation of the Carnegie-Mellon University kernel was prompted mostly by the desire to see symmetric multi-processing capabilities and B3 security levels within OSF/1 – although unconfirmed reports had it that a disagreement over licensing terms between IBM and the Foundation had caused the rift. In response to the recent release of Unix System V.4, the Open Software Foundation said that OSF/1 would include disk mirroring and system call-compatibility with the major Unix variants of Xenix, System V and Berkeley. And, according to Internation Data Corp’s Kate Oakley, the adoption of file system technology from Berkeley’s BSD 4.4 could eliminate the need to license Network File Syetem from Sun Microsystems, a move to avoid reportedly high NFS licensing terms. OSF/1 is now expected to emerge during the latter half of next year, while OSF/2 is due late 1991. Here, the Foundation is talking of a microkernel one fifth of the size of current kernels, interacting with modular, distributed services such as network and file managers. The Open Software Foundation also hopes to include some form of compatibility with OS/2 and proprietary operating systems. On the licensing side, the Foundation said that renegotiations meant that it would no longer be charging binary royalties on its licensed software, reducing end-user prices. Multi-processing strategy was also discussed at the meeting.
