The Open Software Foundation duly announced the shortlist of contenders for its ambitious architecture neutral distribution format request for technology (CI No 1,362). The chosen few, apart from Hewlett-Packard Co and a joint submission by Siemens AG an National Semiconducter Corp, are industry outsiders and research organisations: namely Peritus International Inc, the UK Royal Signals & Radar Establishment, and the University of Virginia. All are now set to begin work on prototyping technology that will enable software to run on any Unix system regardless of processor type. The contenders now enter an eight week planning phase with the Foundation, after which the rest of the evaluation plan will be revealed.
