It looks as if the Common Open Systems Environment gang’s Common Desktop Environment specification is a little more hobbled than the industry has been lead to believe. Remember last year’s UniForum when Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp, Santa Cruz Operation Inc, SunSoft Inc, Univel Inc and Unix Systems Group announced that a specification for a common Motif-based Unix interface would be delivered to X/Open Co Ltd by the end of the year; that products, based on a fast-tracked standard would be around by middle of this year; and that Common Desktop Environment really would happen because it uses technology that is for the most part already built and shipping? First there were problems getting a joint Common Desktop development agreement signed to start the work that needed to be done. Now, sources say the promised specification – a complete version still hasn’t been delivered to X/Open – is unlikely to appear until the middle of next year. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SunSoft and others are likely to begin shipping non-standard implementations derived from the same source tree.
