When it eventually appears, SunLabs Inc’s Spring next-generation object-oriented operating system will run Unix and other operating systems, plus applications and messaging services – as objects. Spring, which started life as a joint Sun Microsystems Inc-AT&T Co project back in 1988, is built on a microkernel architecture and it will be licensed to third party software houses so they can build their own Unix-compliant operating systems. All the interfaces among the services are object-oriented and will use the Interface Definition Language, which has gone on to become an Object Management Group standard.
