There have been more Advanced Computing Environment meetings in the last two weeks than you can shake a stick at, writes Maureen O’Gara. There was a general members meeting the Tuesday before the UniForum show opened, and it seems MIPS Computer Systems Inc is trying to get its arms round ACE’s loose cannons – at least it is said to have made every attempt to dominate the proceedings and get MIPS people onto all the committees. One big change is going down that could really stir things up: according to an apparently new regulation, sources say, any two of the original five founders – to wit MIPS, Santa Cruz Operation Inc, Digital Equipment Corp, Microsoft Corp and Compaq Computer Corp – can veto anything any other group of members, no matter how many, want to do. ACE has also kicked off a 17-company Unix Specification for ACE Technical Work Group, to define the ACE Unix binary standard so that software can run on multiple ACE systems with no modification. It’s being chaired by Silicon Graphics Inc’s System Software Technology Centre director of technology, Robert Olson. Sources in the old Unix System V.4-loving Apache Group, now newly styled the MIPS/System V.4 Special Interest Group, claim MIPS is trying to kidnap the application binary interface and define it itself, to its own advantage. The result could be a roll your own philosophy – a non-standard approach to how a binary or programming interface is defined that appears fair and even-handed – that tears the consortium even further asunder. Certainly it couldn’t go down too well with the likes of Intel Corp. Apparently the committee leadership, said to be MIPS, Unix System Labs, DEC, Santa Cruz and Sony Corp, are set to meet in Dallas, Texas on February 26 to grapple with the dilemma.
