The next public outing for the Common Open Software Environment crew could be at Xhibition, June 7 to 11 at the San Jose Convention Center in California. It will host an executive panel on distributed computing that will argue the Distributed Computing Environment versus Sun Microsystems Inc’s Open Network Computing versus a COSE hybrid case for developers and presumably tackle issues such the proposed COSE-compliant Motif and whether the application programming interface will stick. COSE has also agreed to do a plenary-style panel a la UniForum that should attempt a general statement of intent, an update and try to clear up any COSE confusion. And it will do a session on the desktop, defining the components and, it is hoped, taking us past its St Patrick’s Day position. Apparently the un-group is getting skittish about its voice being heard at Comdex Spring over the din the Big Green Machine, Microsoft, will be making. Meanwhile, Xhibition has rounded up three keynote speakers: DEC’s vice-president of research Sam Fuller will speak on Unix and Microsoft Windows NT, Friends or Foes?; Novell vice-president Robert Davis will talk about Trends in Network Computing and the issues raised for local network and Unix integration caused by Novell’s acquisition of Unix; and Microsoft’s Corporate and Network Systems Business Unit group product manager David Thacher will talk Windows NT.
