Bridgefield, Connecticut-based Bristol Technology Inc is the latest of only four firms known to be admitted by Microsoft Corp into that select circle known as the WISE programme and to be privy to the actual Windows source code. Bristol, a charter member of the Windows-under-Unix group that includes MainSoft Corp, Insignia Solutions Ltd and Locus Computing Corp, said it took a year and a half for it to negotiate a source code licence with Microsoft and estimated that it was only the Redmond firm’s realisation that the move could put an obstacle in the way of Wabi that made its terms gradually more palatable. Bristol intends to use the code to enhance its Wind/U Windows-to-Unix implementation toolkit, adding OLE 2.0, Microsoft’s distributed object schema, later this year. Wind/U already supports Microsoft’s WIN32s application programming interface and 32-bit Visual C++, enabling developers to write applications that run natively on Windows, Windows NT and Unix/Motif from the same Microsoft-dominated base. Products like Bristol’s that are based on real Windows source make life more difficult for Wabi, as Microsoft well realises. Empowering developers to do Object Linking & Embedding – and it is important to remember that the operating system wars have shifted to the objects arena – is generally viewed as another nail in Wabi’s coffin since it is thought to be almost impossible for Wabi to duplicate. Wabi might be forced to stick to running only Windows 3.1 applications, a poor comparison if folks like Bristol and MainSoft as well, are running native OLE 2.0 programs under Unix. Bristol’s deal with Microsoft includes the Microsoft Foundation Class library and future technology from Chicago and the just-released Windows NT 3.5. Bristol partner Insignia Solutions Ltd, which owns 10% of the Bridgefield company, is so unintimidated by Wabi and its prospects these days, Bristol says, that it has ceased the development work with Bristol’s Red Baron technology that it once thought it would need to leave Wabi in the dust. At press time, however, it still remained unclear why Insignia would abandon Red Baron, to which it was looking to increase its emulation speed, when its SoftWindows technology and the stuff Microsoft is using to emulate 16-bit Windows programs in NT is still stuck at 80286 level emulation.
