The Object Management Group has been accused of underhand practices by Joe Maloney, the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment business manager. Responding to a question at the launch of Distributed Computing Environment 1.1, Malo-ney slammed the manner in which a vote was called for adopting the communications protocol for CORBA 2.0. He was incensed that Novell Inc called a vote on adopting the technology at a meeting attended by only 40% of the possible attendees. The meeting voted to adopt a technology from a Novell grouping that is untried and untested according to Maloney and will set things back entirely to a point where they will be re-inventing the wheel. Digital Equipment Corp’s Robert Bismuth, who attended the meeting, said the vote was called suddenly while a discussion was under way in an attempt to force the issue. A technology based on a Remote Procedure Call, which has the backing of DEC, was turned out. End-users must be puzzled at the way things are going (at the Object Group), said Don Herbert, vice-president of DEC’s Unix business segment. The decision is not final though, and Bismuth believes that the facsimile vote that was called is going neck and neck in that about two thirds of members are for the technology, the proportion needed for adoption, with two fifths of the votes in so far. Another vendor present said that it was just another example of the dissent that runs through the industry threatening progress again.
