The industry can heave one huge sigh of relief this leap day week. Its bitterest rivals, Unix International Inc and the Open Software Foundation, are at long last, planning a formal declaration of peace and a final end to the Unix Wars. Their official rapprochement, which could be publicly sealed as quickly as next month at the CeBit Hannover Fair, will include a joint statement directed to the end-user community foreswearing incompatibilities in their different operating system approaches. The two consortia are said to be working on the wording of the statement as well as on the particulars of how it will be implemented. The date for signing this peace treaty has not been firmly set and could slip into April: that depends on getting past the political stonewalling of the Digital Equipment Corp and IBM Corp contingents. It’s an IBM and DEC issue, says Unix International. Apparently Software Foundation founders Hewlett-Packard Co and Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG are now convinced – via their respective work with the Unix International camp’s Sun Microsystems Inc and Unix System V.4 of the need for such a mind-meld, but as long as DEC and IBM don’t influence the Software Foundation in a big way, then it should go forward. The Open Software Foundation, as an organisation, is in favour, says Unix International. First indications of the move will likely come this week at Unix International’s annual members meeting in San Diego, the largest turnout the organisation has ever hosted. Unix International president Peter Cunningham is expected to issue a rousing call for peace between the Unix camps, complete with allusions to the once unthinkable fall of the Berlin Wall and the thaw in the Cold War. He will urge the organisation to create new directions that will encourage companies historically aligned against it to cross the divide, and formally invite the Software Foundation to participate in future technical developments, as it has been doing on an ad hoc basis for the past months, as either a member or non-member. He is also expected to provide for greater participation in Unix International’s processes by end-users, long alienated by the Unix feuds and showing their displeasure by not buying. The peace treaty comes at a key juncture for the entire Unix community as it moves to mass market Unix-on-the-Desktop, and meets the monolithic juggernaut fielded by Microsoft Corp. Festering rifts will only play into Microsoft’s hands.
