A development agreement for the long-gestating Common Desktop Environment Next Pre-Structured Technology effort is finally out for signing; it’s expected back by the end of next week. At least Digital Equipment Corp, Fujitsu Ltd and Hitachi Ltd are expected on board, in addition to the original Common Open Software Environment developers. The plans call for the creation of the next release of Common Desktop and parallel development of OSF/Motif 2.0. As prime development contractor, the X Consortium also has a key decision-making role, and has quietly tripled its headcount to more than 30 engineers in readiness. Some original Common Desktop Next wish-list items, including systems administration and a World Wide Web browser have been dropped, but a multi-threaded version of SunSoft Inc’s ToolTalk and an on-line information access tool are planned. Several million development dollars have already been committed but the project isn’t expected to run to the two years and tens of millions of dollars of the Common D esktop 1.0 fiasco. As well as Common Desktop Next and Distributed Computing Environment 1.2, the Open Software Foundation claims four other Pre-Structured Technologies will roll out before the year end.
