IBM has gone to a little-known company, The Stepstone Corp of Sandy Hook, Connecticut for object-oriented C language programming tools. It has given Stepstone a multi-year agreement under which it will license its Objective-C Compiler and ICpak 101 class library for use on a wide range of – presumably Unix hardware. Stepstone claims its products enable developers of large commercial software systems to improve development productivity and reduce system maintenance costs; the family consists of the Objective-C Compiler and Objective-C Interpreter and two libraries of Software-ICs – the ICPak 101 Foundation Class Library and ICpak 201 Graphical User Interface Class Library. They are currently available on Sun Microsystems, DEC VAX, Apollo Computer and Hewlett-Packard 9000 series 200 and 300, and on AT-alikes.
