At the eleventh hour and counting last week factions inside the Object Management Group were still struggling to head off a showdown between Hewlett-Packard Co, Sun Microsystems Inc and NCR Corp with Object Design Inc on one side and Hyperdesk Inc and Digital Equipment Corp on the other. Sources close to the negotiations, which are aimed at consolidating all the surviving technology into a common submission to achieve a single standard, say the holdout continues to be Hewlett-Packard. HyperDEC has officially agreed to endorse the Hewlett-Sun Class Definition Lnaguage and combine their proposals despite its own reputedly superior technology. Sun appears to be less obdurate than its partner and has apparently adopted something of a mediator’s role between Hewlett-Packard and the others, with the pair reportedly going off to deliberate almost hourly. Their soulmate NCR is apparently not a factor. At least one complaint reportedly voiced against the notion of consolidation is the development time that would be lost if that path were taken – even though it is probably three to five years before anybody makes any money off this stuff. As we went to press, no agreement was expected. Participants thought the decision would go to a vote which was scheduled for Tuesday, June 4 at 2:30 in San Francisco. There are between 20 and 30 companies on the task force which constitutes the voting body. In view of the fact that only seven non-submitting companies showed up for the demos a couple of weeks ago, it is considered doubtful that all of them appeared to cast their votes. By their own admission, some companies at this point are simply befuddled by what it is they are supposed to be voting for. Others have a distaste for the politics that are dominating the situation and would prefer to abstain. However, a simple majority of the votes that are cast is all that will be required to win recommendation. That will throw the ball into the court of the Object Management Group technical committee which meets to vote on the task force recommendation in July. A win there will require a two-thirds majority and could possibly even go against this week’s winner. As the technical committee goes, so apparently does the Object Management Group. For that reason, participants in the negotiations reckon they have at least another month to come to an agreement. If it should go against them, it is believed HyperDEC will honour its pledge to support the Hewlett-Sun Class Definition Language, label itself Object Group-compliant and attempt to persuade users that the Hewlett-Packard solution is neither complete nor sufficient.
