With the demise of the PowerOpen PowerPC supporters club, which will have empty coffers by the end of the year, now looking like an irreversible process – even according to its chief, Tom Mace – IBM Corp looks set to step into the breach with what it is calling its AIX Multiple Vendor Program. Under the programme OEM customers for IBM’s AIX implementation of Unix will be required to complete a set of certification tests with the operating system running on vendors’ hardware before they will be able to carry the AIX trade mark. IBM claims the tests will give software developers and AIX users a consistent PowerPC application binary interface.
