Sound like deja vu all over again? With Novell Inc’s popularity among the Unix crowd apparently at an all-time low, there are said to have been talks about drumming up yet another Unix development body to do the job. Insiders say the idea of creating some kind of separate entity is little more than that, not least because of the complications SunSoft Inc’s licence buyout has raised; whether the noise amounts to more than stick-shaking at Novell is unclear. The iAPX-86 system vendors are said to be talking to Novell about working together at an engineering level to have their needs accommodated, while the Open Software Foundation would like to steer overall Unix development if it could. Observers see the market squaring up, with UnixWare and SunSoft Unix licensees on opposite sides and one or two other Unixes on the sidelines.
