Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co will launch their object-oriented version of Unix, code named Spring, this autumn, according to Microscope magazine, two years ahead of Taligent and Microsoft’s Cairo. The paper claims this represents a serious challenge to other RISC vendors jostling for position in the software arena. The project covers the production of an Interface Definition Language which will convert Unix-based systems to object-orientation. Sun vice-president John Cage says that Spring was conceived as a backlash to the formation of the Open Software Foundation in 1989. The Foundation hindered Sun’s production of a standard Unix and despite Hewlett’s sponsorship of the Foundation, Sun and Hewlett then secretly allied to bring together expertise in the operating system and user interface respectively.
