Gossip was racing through the industry last week that Hewlett-Packard Co and perhaps even IBM Corp, apparently the most laggard of the Big Three – would be putting in appearances at Unix System Laboratories Inc’s Destiny launch tomorrow, and that Digital Equipment Corp might even come bearing a glittering Christening present, reports today’s edition of our sister paper Unigram.X. One of DEC’s official spokesmen allowed that it would probably send along representatives ready to support Unix System V.4 with its Network Application Support environment, but late Friday, after Unigram went to press, it began getting vibrations that DEC might even announce that it would adopt Unix System V.4.2 as yet another operating system for the Alpha RISC. Hewlett-Packard, a more consensus-run establishment, might be a bit more tepid this week in its enthusiasms but is believed to be sending observers with at least a statement of goodwill. IBM is said to be late with its packing and may not get to show the flag officially. However it too is thought to be moving to catch up with the market. Since the event is not exactly Unity II, but only its stepchild, much of the factionalism inside the industry is still lively. The Foundation is caught in the middle and is said to be being pulled in both directions, with some of the Foundation staff, not to say members, said to be questioning the wisdom of their chief, David Tory, making an appearance at the launch. A Foundation spokeswoman said that Tory was preparing his own remarks and that she had no idea what he would finally say. She read a draft of the Foundation’s position paper, which focused on the importance of portability, adoption of its technologies – the Distributed Computing Environment, Distributed Management Environment and Motif – by Unix Labd, and the expansion of their camaraderie beyond a common applications programming interface. Notably it made no mention of any collaboration, specifically on ANDF, though some kind of working relationship on that technology is expected to be forged, according to one insider. The Foundation also suggested there would be further endorsement of OSF/1 from an unidentified quarter this week. Tory of course will have to fend off inquiries about the continued viability of the operating system and the re-prioritisation going on inside the Foundation. Intel Corp, which last week purred over Univel Inc and its UnixWare, will doubtless also be making an appearance at the launch.
