On Monday afternoon last week, Open Software Foundation president David Tory fronted a hastily organised press event in Boston to put the Foundation’s case for ending its long-running talks with AT&T, seen as the only hope for resolving the schism between companies supporting the conflicting OSF/1 and Unix System V.4 varieties of Unix. Tory then immediately flew to Paris to repeat the exercise on Tuesday at noon. He claimed that organisational unity had been the basis of discussions, with the aim of creating a single, vendor-independent organisation to take control over Unix. That organisation had to be equally owned by the partners involved, he said, and there could be no negotiation on Open Software Foundation principles. Discussions are under non-disclosure, and we won’t make public statements, said Tory, but there was a real expectation that AT&T would sell the Unix Software Operation and the Unix title and product to the industry on an equal ownership basis. Robert Kavner, in interviews, made it plain that this was part of the process.

Abrupt

But Software Foundation sponsors were concerned that the Foundation’s vendor-neutral technology, OSF/1, should be protected as the next generation operating environment. Given that organisational unity has not happened, it can be assumed that these starting points were not satisfied. The last round of talks was instigated at the Unix Expo trade show in New York last October, and despite long months of seemingly little progress, the abrupt cessation of talks came as a surprise to observers, and to many of those involved. It is understood that Kavner suggested to the Software Foundation board in October that AT&T would have less than 50% of any spin-off, and would move to equal ownership for all over five years. Real negotiations started in January with an AT&T proposal – long since modified – that reportedly called for AT&T to have 46%, other companies 46%, with the rest going to employees. The Foundation then came back with something of its own, followed by a Unix International document in February called Basic Principles for Unity, leading to a proposal both sides were to vote on – the vote had to be unanimous. Behind all this were a number of subcommittees, each with a Unix International and Open Foundation representative, working out the proposal to be voted on, and covering such areas as people, business and technology – so the proposal itself represented the thinking of many people on both sides. The results of all this work were taken to the Foundation board two weeks ago to see if a consensus could be reached, and the reaction was to have been reported back to the Unix International board in a meeting scheduled for this week. It apparently came as a complete shock to Unix International when chairman Peter Cunningham was notified on Thursday April 5 that the Open Software Foundation was not only rejecting the proposal but pulling out of all further negotiations.

By John Abbott and Maureen O’Gara

The meeting called for this week is ostensibly still scheduled, and Unix International negotiators are hoping to try and find out the real reason why the Foundation pulled out. One Foundation source on the negotiating team suggested that there had been some backtracking on Kavner’s October statement that AT&T did not want a majority share. He indicated that AT&T had wanted to phase-in outside ownership over time, and that the Foundation just didn’t trust AT&T enough to believe that it would ever relinquish majority ownership. Another source suggested that there had been an attempt to stack the new organisation’s board of directors to favour AT&T. This was vehemently denied by Unix International’s Peter Cunningham. No proposal gave anyone undue access or control over the board he said. Tory laid great emphasis on the amount of resources and effort used up by the talks. The Open Software Foundation’s plans were delayed once before by taking part in talks with AT&T, just after formation. I didn’t want that to happen again. Aside from these issues, it is hard to see

how the technical issue of which technology to use could have been resolved without compromising either side. The result of it all has been a closing of the ranks at the Foundation, and increased comm itment from some of its member companies. Previously, only Hewlett-Packard had made a firm promise that it would ship the OSF/1 operating system in 1991, but at the press briefings, DEC, Groupe Bull, Hitachi and IBM said that they too would ship next year. George Lepicard from Groupe Bull said that after evaluating AT&T’s Unix System V.4, his company could see no justification to go to V.4 – it is an unnecessary step. In terms of architecture and functionality, OSF/1 is clearly above V.4. IBM, in a rare mood of pre-announcement, said that OSF/1 would be available on its PS/2s next year, and promised to reveal more details in the third quarter of this year. In contrast to IBM, putting its toe in the Foundation waters on a product that is marginal in Unix terms and where it can do little harm, DEC was aggressively promising to make OSF/1 its mainstream Unix offering, saying that it would appear next year as a new release of Ultrix, under the Ultrix name. The same companies said they had offered extended financial commitment to the Foundation, the actual amount depending on the body’s need. Our financial plan is clear to the end of 1991 said Tory, but planning more than a year ahead is always a risk, and there may be some shortfall in 1992. We are driving towards complete self sufficiency.

Acrimony

Given the acrimony caused by the rift on both sides – Unix International is particularly annoyed that after working on and agreeing to issue only an extremely lame joint press release on the row, the Open Software Foundation immediately supplemented it with its own more strongly worded-missive – it seems extremely unlikely that any meaningful talks will be possible in the foreseeable future. And despite the fact that the two sides will both conform to Posix and X/Open specifications, that is a situation calculated to undermine the confidence of users and slow down the acceptance of the Unix standard in the marketplace. It is a topic very likely to be raised at the forthcoming X/Open user conference in Luxembourg next month. The Foundation’s David Tory, however, denied that the move would have a negative effect on the industry. I think there is general relief that discussions are ended – it puts the operating systems movement back onto a multiple choice basis. In other words, back where the two biggest proprietary proponents, IBM and DEC, always wanted it to be.