The next Request for Technology specifications to be issued by the Open Software Foundation will be revealed in mid-May, a Foundation spokesman confirmed last week. At least two Requests are likely to be issued at the OSF members meeting to be held in Monaco, and will include interoperability and communications, and Application Neutral Distribution Format, ANDF – seen as the Foundation answer to Unix International Inc’s concentration on Application Binary Interfaces. ANDF is likely to use interpreted intermediate code to produce portable applications across processor types, in much the same way as the old p-System Pascal operating system developed at the University of California, San Diego, and distributed at one time by Softech Inc, Waltham, Massachusetts was designed to do. If successfully implemented, the technology would go beyond the shrink-wrapped software offered by machines conforming to the Application Binary Interfaces for individual processors, according to the Foundation. Other Requests under consideration for the May meeting include systems administration and security: the systems administration Request is likely to be subject to an abbreviated version of the Foundation’s so-called open process, in order to speed its implementation.
