Open Software Foundation stalwart Digital Equipment Corp last week finally bowed to the inevitable, announcing that it will make a Unix System V.4 personality generally available for its OSF/1 version 1.2 implementation on Alpha AXP machines from September. The company mounted a rear-guard defence of its three-pronged operating system strategy last week – OSF/1, NT and OpenVMS – but it had left a lot of substance on the cutting room floor before finally calling together top industry watchers in Maynard, Massachusetts, and around the world for the Unified Unix strategy briefing. Indeed, DEC president Bob Palmer was missing from what should have been a showpiece event. Indicating that it can no longer afford to keep Unix System V.4 out of its price book, the System V.4 personality comes out of DEC’s CalComp Telecommunications laboratories, which of course has been quietly supplying System V.4 to the firm’s telecommunications customers for some time. A System V.4-on-Alpha plan has been in the works for as long as a year and was made all the more likely when Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA announced it would implement System V.4 on the high-end Alpha AXP systems it is to market. DEC, which admits it has been locked in a defensive position over Unix, will sell version 1 of the personality as a layered add-on product to the 64-bit OSF/1 1.2. Version 1.1, due by the end of the year, will include system administration facilities lacking from the initial release. Support for symmetric multiprocessing and C2 security will be addressed in a major new release of OSF/1 next year. The Maynard minimaker says it is currently evaluating several symmetric multiprocessor technologies and will announce its choice by the end of the year. DEC says it has no plans to license its System V.4 work to other OSF/1 probables like Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp, fully expecting them to come up with their own implementations in this area. Customers of DEC’s Berkeley System Distribution-based Ultrix Unix, which features on its doomed MIPS Technologies Inc hardware line will be migrated up to Alpha and OSF/1 1.2. DEC reckons it can come closer to a unified Unix than any other supplier, and as recently as last month, freely admitted that its whole strategy is dependent on just such a game plan. Presently seen as the weakest of the majors in Unix, it believes it can quickly make up ground on other Unix suppliers. DEC claims 2,000 development sites for OSF/1 1.2 on Alpha, with 400 applications up and running with a further 1,000 committed. The company, which also offers Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix on its Intel Corp DECpc line, says it has no plans to join Unix International.
