It had collapsed in all but name already, but the Advanced Computing Environment, launched with such a fanfare by Compaq Computer Corp, Silicon Graphics Inc and MIPS Computer Systems Inc with support from Digital Equipment Corp and Microsoft Corp just 15 months ago, has collapsed. Insiders tell our sister paper Unigram.X that any semblance of an organisation has been abandoned. There are no more meetings, no more phone conferences and the remaining participants are getting their money back. In the meantime, public relations impresario Regis McKenna Inc has been hired to distract attention away from ACE’s bevy of erstwhile operating systems and on to the Advanced RISC Computing hardware. The reason is that some weeks ago MIPS Technologies Inc kidnapped the ACE applications binary interface and substituted MIPS RiscOS for all the other previously official ACE operating systems. In return, MIPS promised to pay for everything the ACE loyalists, largely the die-hards in the old Unix System V.4-loving Apache Group, needed for an independent software vendor recruitment drive: all the machines, all the binaries, all the technical support. The offer probably saved Sony Corp, which was reportedly ready to rustle up some 50 machines and software, costing in the neighbourhood of $250,000. The software vendor programme supposedly kicked off last week despite a quiet little ruling handed down a few days before by MIPS’ new parent, Silicon Graphics Inc, that says RiscOS 5.1, due in the autumn, will be the end of the line. After that, the system, regarded pretty much as Unix System V.4 with proprietary extensions for real-time and multi-processing, goes on a maintenance-only basis. This new twist, hardly an enticement to any self-respecting software developer, would seem to open the door for Unix System V.4.2 to make a move at the next Apache meeting in August. That is, if it can overcome the notion of some Apaches, who apparently believe that some provision should still re main for Microsoft Corp Windows NT.
