Proponents of the Public Windows Initiative application programming interface specification indicate that the Redmond factor may lie behind Digital Equipment Corp’s decision at a recent European Computer Manufacturing Association General Assembly meeting to vote against the continuation of the specification work that one of the association’s technical committee has been doing: the suspicion is that DEC is so committed to Windows NT that it does not want to upset Microsoft Corp. A mail vote, the result of which is due by the end of February, will decide whether DEC’s nay-saying becomes policy or whether the specification, now officially called APIW, goes forward as planned into an International Standards Organisation fast-track process. After getting the cold shoulder from X/Open Co Ltd because of its copyright concerns, SunSelect, the former Sun Microsystems Inc planet responsible for Public Windows Initiative and Wabi, took its notion of converting and running Windows applications under Unix via a publicly available set of interface specifications, to the European association last April, calling it a more official standards body than X/Open. It picked up support from a bunch of Unix vendors along the way, including Novell Inc, and secured the attention of the US Defense Information Systems Agency, which has and is funding continued development. Some 60% to 70% of the documented and undocumented Windows application programming interface calls have now been compiled, the next stage will be to build test suites. If the European Computer Manufacturing Association vote goes against Sun it will not be the end of the project – though it is a rather large dent in the specification’s possible standing – and the work will require a new home to finish the specification and develop test suites. In parallel with the association’s effort, APIW supporters have also been trying to breathe a Pre-Structured Technology process into life over at the Open Software Foundation. It has had an architectural planning review, but nothing has gone by the Software Foundation board yet as there is none of the standard reference implementation work to show, or even a finished specification, just several hundred pages of documentation. However, with Mitre Corp apparently prepared to back a Pre-Structured Technology as contractor, the Defense Department contributing, and the Software Foundation staff backing the project, APIW supporters are hopeful that a Pre-Structured Technology will be born for what has been dubbed Safe Windows in some quarters.
