The wave of rapprochement sweeping the Unix industry moved on one step further yesterday, when, as expected, (CI No 1,774), the Advanced Computing Environment initiative conceded to mounting pressure from both inside and outside of its camp, striking a deal with AT&T’s Unix System Laboratories Inc for the development of a common set of application programming interfaces that will enable software developed for Unix Labs’ Unix System V.4 – or the Open Software Foundation’s OSF/1 rival Unix offering – to run on ACE’s MIPS Computer Systems Inc and Intel Corp hardware under the OSF/1-based Open Desktop Unix environment currently being put together for it by the Santa Cruz Operation Inc and Digital Equipment Corp. As well as signing on with the ACE crowd, Unix Labs, which recently swallowed its pride and announced inclusion of the Foundation’s distributed computing technology in its own Atlas vision of distributed computing, will include interfaces to the Motif graphical user interface – as well as to OSF/1 and the Distributed Computing Environment – in its ACE System V.4 products. If Unix Labs’ commitments can be met for ACE’s RISC and iAPX-86 hardware architectures, the prospect of a unified Unix environment for the industry at large must be drawing ever closer. As for ACE’s tortuous progress towards a graphical front-end for its Open Desktop environment goes (CI No 1,745), Compaq Computer Corp – which has expressed a preference for Hewlett-Packard Co’s Visual User Environment, Santa Cruz – which favours IXI Ltd’s X.desktop manager, and Unix Labs – which has a Mac-like front-end under development for its Unix Lite – say they are now working on an application programming specification for a desktop manager they will be putting to the ACE membership.
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