Amdahl Corp insists that its joint development with Sun Microsystems Inc for a Solaris-with-UTS operating system (CI No 2,269) is quite separate from the tripartite agreement between itself, sibling ICL Plc and dominant shareholder Fujitsu Ltd, to develop a common Unix application development environment for their respective Sparc architectures. Times are so hard that collaboration is the order of the day, however, and the Sunnyvale company admits that the three, plus Sun, are looking at ways of pooling their respective efforts. Despite the attempts at a ceasefire in the Unix wars, Sun is still in somewhat uncomfortable position because there is evidence that behind the scenes, Open Software Foundation sponsors IBM Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co are both gunning for Sun, envious of its strength in technical applications, so it needs all the true friends it can get.
