ACE developers say they have been told by the Santa Cruz Operation Inc that SCO’s Open Desktop for ACE has slipped at least six months, pushing first availability from July of 1992 to the end of next year. The news has made them suspicious that the software will eventually be put on indefinite hold unless DEC, whose version of OSF/1 forms the basis of Open Desktop for ACE, somehow intervenes. The developers’ snapshot, due next month, is apparently unaffected. The reported delay, one of a series of crises currently besetting the Initiative, has seriously shaken confidence that ACE will ever amount to much. Although System V.4 is another Unix option for ACE, the Initiative looks more and more like it probably always was – a Microsoft-on-Intel play. Could it be that SCO is looking to the short term and a flotation?
