It now appears that delivery dates for the promised merged Unix/Xenix operating system implementation, which was originally scheduled to come out at the end of this year, have slipped into the second half of 1988, delegates at the Santa Cruz Operation’s Xenix Developer’s Conference in San Francisco were told late last month. First announced at the beginning of the year by Microsoft and Interactive Systems, the merge was later endorsed at Uniforum by the participation of AT&T and the Santa Cruz Operation, the intended result being an operating system providing binary compatibility for both Xenix and Unix on hardware built around Intel iAPX-86 family chips, to be marketed under the Unix banner. More recently, in a letter sent out to developers, AT&T revised the expected date to mid-1988. Microsoft’s Paul Maritz, quoted in Microbytes Daily, said at the conference that with Santa Cruz, Microsoft would ensure that all extensions of Xenix would be compatible with the new standard. In London, Santa Cruz Operation’s Stuart Hooper expressed little surprise at the delay. With four companies involved, you might expect timescales to slip, he said. One reason, he suggested, might be due to discussions over whether features such as graphical interfaces and windowing should be generic features or left as added value for individual vendors. Microport Systems president Charles Hickey pointed to recent reports in the US press which indicated that Santa Cruz Operation itself might not begin shipping the product for another two years. The main work for the 80386 is being co-ordinated through Intel, he said, and no other vendor should receive any major advantage over the others.
