Firms involved in the reported Distributed Computing Environment 1.2 Pre-Structured Technology process over at the Open Software Foundation are understood to be looking at ways they can downsize the already swollen project. The organisation’s new charter ties new technology development under Software Foundation auspices to funding pledged by participating companies. According to insiders, the Distributed Computing Environment would-be’s baulked at what their first pass spreadsheets came up with, and are now looking at paying for a reduced set of technologies. They are also trying to decide between IBM Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co as the prime contractor on the project. Even so, the cost will not be less than the $10m that was spent on doing DCE 1.1, it’s reckoned. The Software Foundation was intending to describe its plans for Distributed Computing Environment next month. Although the Foundation is now also home to the Common Open Software Environment and the Common Desktop Environment initiative, its recent metamorphosis doesn’t seem to have engendered an new sense of vision. What is the Software Foundation but Distributed Computing Environment, and to a lesser extent CDE/Motif? Some people at the beleaguered fortress have given up waiting for an answer to the question and they warn that the Software Foundation is in danger of losing some of the political goodwill it earned during the New Software Foundation process, raising the spectre of the Distributed Management Environment debacle. The New Software Foundation needs to prove itself a credible industry body and Software Foundation chief David Tory especially needs a success: he remains more optimistic than some of his reports, we hear. One thing is for sure: it won’t be the OSF/1 Unix that carries the organisation forward. Although the Software Foundation, good as its word, got OSF/1 1.3 out of the door last week, insiders admit that OSF/1 has no future beyond the efforts of Ira Goldstein’s Research Institute programme, observing that there’s no real OSF/1 team any more, and that some of its former members are now finding jobs vacated by Distributed Computing Environment engineers. In any case there’s no will – let alone funding – to do any further OSF/1 development under the terms of the new charter, although the Software Foundation will continue to benefit from Digital Equipment Corp’s OSF/1 royalty stream until such time as the Maynarder hangs up that hat, buys it out or changes it unrecognisably. The Software Foundation says the Spec 1170-conformant release 1.3 microkernel retains some 97% of OSF/1 commands and libraries and Unix services. It has a new mechanism for gathering system performance information and a kernel interface for network device drivers.
