Siemens AG, founder member and sponsor of the Open Software Foundation, has finally succumbed to mounting pressure to select an operating system for its new MX range – and has plumped for the AT&T flagship Unix System V.4 system of the rival Unix International camp. For some time now, Siemens insiders have made it plain that the Mnchener was simply not in a position to wait for the OSF/1 offering promised for November (CI No 1,460), and yesterday’s announcement confirms suspicions of a move away from the Foundation that started with Siemens’ decision to replace the National Semiconductor NS32323 chip with the Intel 80486 (CI No 1,448). In a complete U-turn, Siemens now uses glowing terms to describe the flagship AT&T operating system: Unix System V.4 brings together the most important and widespread Unix systems, and is ideally placed to offer co-existence with, and migration from older systems; what’s more, it has progressive functionality and good performance at a high quality and will make available to its users a comprehensive and consistent range of system and application software. Commenting on the decision, a Siemens spokesman confirmed curtly that it was based on the lack of availability of OSF/1, and said that when OSF/1 was on the market, there will be a new discussion – but users that switch to System V.4 certainly aren’t going to want to switch again within a year or so’s time.
