OSF/2, the still-speculative next iteration of the Open Software Foundation’s famed operating system OSF/1, may not be ready for implementation and marketing for another three to six years if the Foundation persists in its apparent plans to base the future implementation on Mach, according to some of the attendees of the Foundation’s Microkernel Design Review Workshop held in Boston the week before last. The workshop, intended as a critical appraisal of the Open Software Foundation Research Institute’s advanced development programme, focused exclusively on the notion of the Foundation producing a microkernel Mach in concert with Carnegie-Mellon University in furtherance of its aim of eliminating all Unix Software Laboratories Inc-licensed code from its future Unix, and excluded discussion of any other kernel technologies, attendees said. However, these discussions, which centred on such items as interfaces, object approach to server construction, performance, security and cupport for distributed systems, were apparently geared to the academics in the audience, and raised more problems than answers. They left at least parts of the audience feeling that any really usable code was a long way out, and well beyond the normal cycle of the product developers.
