The Open Group is continuing its re-positioning towards the dial-tone set of standards for electronic business applications over the internet, and yesterday outsourced more of its older Unix technology business. Support for the ten year-old Motif user interface, still used by something like 85% of the Unix industry, will be taken over by Motif veteran company Integrated Computer Solutions Inc, based two blocks away from the Open Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ICS will take over front-line support, while the Open Group will continue to provide updates and enhancements. Two key staff have already moved to ICS. Although Motif Release 2.1 came out at the end of 1996, Unix manufacturers are only now bringing to market operating systems software that incorporate it and the related CDE common desktop environment, which is implemented on top of Motif. The Open Group’s technology business manager, David Knorr, says that the next upgrade, 2.1.20 will be out by year-end, primarily for bug fixes. But the group’s sponsors have not yet decided whether to fund the development of a follow-on Release 3.0. New versions can be used in conjunction with the Broadway internet version of the X protocol, now on release 6.4. This month, the Group’s X project team means to determine the business model for moving X forward. Knorr wouldn’t comment more on the current changes in the Open Group, which are rumored to be threatening the future of its research laboratories in Cambridge and Grenoble (CI No 3,406). Our old business is proceeding in a normal fashion said Knorr, who nevertheless admits that the Group has been looking again at how it manages collaborative ventures, outsourcing and cross company working groups – the ICS deal being part of that effort. Motif still accounts for the majority of ICS’s business, including its high-end BuilderXcessory tool, but the company – which employs 50 staff – is busy establishing a new strand of its business as a reseller of the Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s Tarantella thin client software.
