At last! – Unix becomes a conformance trademark
Three weeks behind schedule, Novell Inc and X/Open Co Ltd last week formally announced that the Unix trademark will be transferred to X/Open. X/Open will make it available to vendors immediately and, after signing a trademark agreement, they will be permitted to call their products Unix. The agreement stipulates that products must be compatible with XPG3 or XPG4 and System V Interface Definition 2 or 3; be derived from Unix Systems Group operating system technology; and comply with X/Open’s Spec 1170 suite within 12 to 18 months of the application programming interface becoming available – currently set for mid-1994. Users of the trademark will pay licence fees to X/Open, based on the volume of Unix products they ship. Novell retains ownership of the software, which it bought from AT&T Co when it acquired Unix System Laboratories Inc, and it will continue to collect licence and source code fees accordingly. In return for giving up the trademark, Novell gets a seat on the 15-strong X/Open board, paying no dues for the first three years, and also gets free use of the Unix trademark for three years too (X/Open has a formula worked out for Novell’s use of it thereafter). Effectively, Unix changes from being a product name to a conformance trademark.
X/Open COSE spec update
X/Open Co Ltd’s Spec 1170 review process was concluded last Friday, October 15. Responses will now be reviewed and there may be a final round of consensus building before the specification goes before the X/Open membership. No-one is digging great holes in it, says Mike Lambert. The final spec should be delivered by mid-1994, Lambert said. Although Novell XPS/IPX NetWare protocols are not currently included within the Spec 1170 document, there are moves for them to be included as an optional extension over the next few months. Indications are that they will not find their way into the official set of unified APIs. Although X/Open will oversee the evolution of Spec 1170, development of the next-generation system software specifications to be passed on is a more closely guarded affair. Further technology deals were alluded to at last week’s event. However, much is expected to rest on the outcome of talks to bring the Unix warhorses, Unix International Inc and the Open Software Foundation together in some type of NewOrg. Unix International was conspicuous by its absence. Asked if X/Open would make any money out of licensing the Unix trademark, given that IBM Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co et al seem intent on not using the word, Lambert assured us that’s the difficult part, but in one year’s time, they will be. He declared that user procurement pressures will build up around the unified Unix specification and force vendors to make their conformance with Spec 1170 highly evident. Indeed, although IBM says it won’t change the name of its AIX implementation to Unix and Hewlett-Packard says it is evaluating the situation, what is most likely – and expected in SunSoft Inc’s case – is that vendors will use the trademark to advertise their products as Unix implementations.
Microsoft’s Bill Gates outlines his view of the X/Open-Novell gambit and pours cold water on it
Bill Gates has responded to initiative with the following message: A company that creates an operating system has two choices in terms of how it does its licensing. One approach is to enforce a strict definition of the APIs of the operating system and not allow licensees to add or change APIs. Licensees can optimise around their hardware through unique implementations but all of the elements independent software vendors and end users depend on – user interface, standard utilities, shell, and APIs remain the same. Microsoft took this approach from the start of the personal computer industry because we felt that making the economics work for software developers we would get the most and the best applications. We felt applications determined the value of the operating system. By offering a consistent system we allow
developers to not even think about the hundreds of manufacturers of MS-DOS and Windows machines. Likewise the customer of these machines can change hardware suppliers every day without changing any of their software or without being denied the latest mainstream innovations. It is the power of this compatibility that has allowed personal computers, despite having much less power until recently, to sell in volumes over 100x as large as the best-selling workstations. Another approach is to allow licensees to make any change they want. The benefit here is that companies who have lots of software engineers can challenge them to add state of the art unique features that will allow their platform to be unique and not allow applications of customers to easily migrate to other platforms.
Drop dramatically
Although the core of the operating system is standard the latest applications never stick to that core so the ability to get mix and match workstations of various types is as bad as mixing different types of minicomputers. An extreme example of the amount of modification comes if we look at Solaris versus NeXTstep. Almost none of the code and APIs are the same. The user interface is completely different. If it was easy to take Solaris applications and run them on IBM, DEC or HP machines that would have meant that Sun’s sales would drop dramatically when they started falling behind these other workstations on price-performance. Customers didn’t switch because they were locked in. Imagine a personal computer vendor like Compaq trying to hold onto customers for years when their price-performance is not competitive. Compaq did try this and it almost put them out of business. The basic point is that IBM, HP, DEC are committed to having one of their operating system offerings being based on special work that their engineers do. As long as these engineers still have a job, incompatibilies will proliferate around the most important new features of these systems. If IBM, HP and DEC decide not to have any of these engineers than Unix is no different for them than any other truly standardised operating system. The only reason these companies get involved with Unix in a direct way is because they have groups whose very strategy is to create incompatibilies with other versions of Unix. Over the years we have seen many attempts to standardise Unix. Groups like Unix International, OSF, X/Open, COSE and many others have come together to focus on this goal. However, the very structure of the Unix market has ensured that this is an endless process. If Novell tries to force this process then only Novell will have a particular interest in the resulting OS. It will start off with less applications and volume than Windows and therefore be of less interest to developers and customers. There is no way to have it both ways in the world of operating systems. All in all, Novell’s Great Unix Give Away scheme has proved to be a star-crossed affair. First there was the aborted Unix Expo announcement that did little to advance the Unix cause. Then, last week’s press conference, an international satellite hook-up originating in New York, was beset by sound problems that made it difficult to follow. Luckily, this didn’t matter. What was said – for all the executive talent assembled was pretty much content-free – as is so fashionable in press conferences these days. However, last week’s event may have set a new unbeatable record – even some of the assembled companies’ public relations were dismissive. Meanwhile the US trade press was last week voicing user scepticism over the project and Novell’s grasp of Unix.
