A plague on both your houses: oilmen plan to form Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation

Coming only a fortnight after news that some of the biggest industrial users of Unix are striking out and forming a group that will press for the development of one Unix standard following the breakdown of reconciliation talks between Unix International and the Open Software Operation, it now seems that oilmen too have had enough of the industry’s squabbling and bickering. British Petroleum Co Ltd, Texaco Inc, Exxon Corp, Shell Oil, Mobil and Chevron are just a few of the 42 oil companies now busy forming a non-profit making organisation known as the Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation, with the aim of establishing a set of Unix standards for applications and data formats used in oil exploration and production. According to Dan Turner, who heads the team trying to set up the oilmen’s Corporation, and is director of information systems for BP, based in Houston, Texas, such a group is much-needed because the oil industry spends an awful lot of money and time doing things that do not produce oil. The main objective is to ensure that member companies can move information about production, geological surveys and explorations between their systems, via a software integration platform with a common application programming interface. In theory it could lead to changes in the way that oil companies make hardware and software procurements, where IBM, DEC, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems are among the biggest system suppliers to a market reckoned to be worth around $1,000m a year. The oil industry currently uses a host of disparate hardware and software systems for exploration and production – the Corporation will try to lay down some common data models and imaging methods that can be implemented right across the industry. The group is structuring itself along the lines of the Open Software Foundation, indeed it has received organisational advice from the Foundation itself, and – like the Foundation – is signing up corporate members to provide funding. The cost is $850,000, or $100,000 for an individual membership. Ten companies are said to be interested in joining as corporate members, and two have already committed internally. A business and legal review of the issues involved will be complete by June, and July 1 is currently penned in as a launch date. The Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation will procure its software via a Requests for Technology process similar to the Foundation’s, adopting standards such as Posix and X/Open where they exist, and develop others where necessary. However the relationship ends here, and the group has no commitment to adopting the OSF/1 operating system, or any other pieces of its technology. With the Unix industry embroiled in its own standards war, the oil business has had little to lead it down the open systems road, and a range of different data formats, proprietary operating systems, as well as different versions of Unix have been become popular. The problem was exacerbated in the 1980s with the binge of company acquisitions, creating huge conglomerates each with a jumble of incompatible information systems. The effort could mark something of a watershed for the oil industry, where firms working on joint development projects in the North Sea or on the China coast could share data for the first time.

Sitting on the fence: latest release of SAS System to be Open Look-, Motif-compliant

European SAS Institute fans gathered last week at their annual Seugi conference. The highlight of the event was the opening ceremony in which Art Cooke, manager, SAS Institute Europe, specified launch dates for the company’s full Unix version of the SAS System software. Version 6.07 will be Motif- and Open Look-compliant and for the first time allows Unix peer-to-peer connection. The product is out on beta test and during the fourth quarter it will be available on the IBM RS/6000, the Hewlett-Packard Apollo and 9000 machines and the Data General AViiON series. The next Unix machines to be addressed will i

nclude products from Sun Microsystems and the Silicon Graphics machines. The next version, 6.08, due out late 1991, will resolve the compatibility problem with the previous major release of the software, Version 5. Co-operative processing will also be addressed in this release. SAS also reiterated announcements made at the US equivalent of Seugi – Sugi. These include joint development activities with IBM and IBM’s commitment to market the SAS System under AIX. SAS users from 21 countries at the conference were once more treated to demonstrations of SAS version 6.06, now shipping, which SAS previewed at last year’s Seugi, held in Cologne (CI No 1,177).

Open Software Foundation dumps Xenix compatibility from OSF/1…

The Open Software Foundation has cut itself adrift from the largest base of commercial Unix applications by dropping Xenix compatibility from its OSF/1 implementation, a Foundation board member told our sister paper Unigram.X last week, even though it was promised for the November release: observers are curious whether the rationale is the engineering time it would take or the level of royalty demanded by Microsoft.

advances portability search…

There are now four organisations working on prototypes for the Open Software Foundation’s ambitious Architecture Neutral Distribution Format software project said a Foundation spokeswoman last week, including Hewlett-Packard Co teamed with the University of Virginia. The expectation is that the Foundation will make a prototype selection in the fourth quarter of this year, to be followed by an announcement in the first quarter of 1991 of a system supplier.

and makes for Open Road

The meeting also produced a new industry buzzword – Open Road an expression coined by Foundation vice-president of research and advanced development Ira Goldstein, and meant to stand in stark contrast to Unix International’s Roadmap. Unlike the latter’s scheme, Open Road is described not as a five-year plan, but a flexible, evolutionary structure that encompasses all Foundation technology, not just its operating system, subject to input from all sides – a prioritisation. The Foundation is also planning to put out a Systems Management Request for Technology later this year, looking for the tools necessary to accomplish what used to be called central administration. Version 1.2 of the Motif user interface is expected later this year, reportedly adding significant international functionality like extended bit support, particularly urgent for the Pacific Rim. Someone familar with thre inner workings of the Open Software Foundation claims the most influential member is Hewlett-Packard – not only because it controls the chair – but on a day-to-day level because of the sheer number of people on sabbatical it has working there: at board level, IBM and DEC are said to be practically pussycats.