Santa Cruz Operation Inc, in the US at least, is now talking publicly about offering full Unix V.4 compatibility in its system software products from next year. Up until now, Santa Cruz, which is developing the bundle of Unix software and services, Open Desktop, which will run on the Advanced Computing Environment’s hardware architectures, has steered clear of committing itself whole-heartedly to the Unix International camp, having one foot firmly rooted in the Open Software Foundation. It is a renewed effort to develop an Intel Binary Compatibility Standard, iBCS, for Unix applications on Intel Corp systems that has started the chatter all over again. In August last year, Santa Cruz, Unix System Laboratories, Intel Corp and Interactive Systems Corp agreed to define and support a common binary application specification for Intel 80386 and 80486-based systems. After much hard work, version 1 of iBCS was scrapped, because Santa Cruz’s Unix offering included proprietary pieces of code that made it incompatible with Unix Labs’ Unix System V.4 that was coming on to the market. A new effort, begun after Uniforum ’91 earlier this year, including the Open Software Foundation too – but minus, it seems, the prospective SunSoft subsidiary, Interactive – has come up with iBCS version 2. It will ensure binary application compatibility and migration between Santa Cruz-based System V.3.2, Unix System V.4 and OSF/1 on the 80386 and 80486. Santa Cruz says it already adheres to the specifications. Unix Labs will include it in System V.4 early next year, the Foundation sometime later. And Santa Cruz Operation says it will have a new version of its operating system early next year.
