The UniForum conference and exhibition, which opens at San Francisco’s Moscone Center later today (California is eight hours behind the UK) promises to be the biggest single Unix event in the 20-year history of the operating system, and a interesting press launch has been scheduled for the first day: DEC, Locus Computing Corp, Relational Technology Inc, Santa Cruz Operation and Tandy Corp are due to make a joint announcement; although all parties were keeping a discreet silence on the announcement, we understand that the companies will introduce a cut price software package for 80386-based systems, including SCO Xenix with PC Interface from Locus, the Ingres database, the OSF Motif user interface and X-Windows along with DEC’s X toolkit, all packaged and distributed by Santa Cruz and costing less than Ingres on its own; although the price we had heard – $995 – was the only aspect of the announcement that no-one would confirm; the package is presumably aimed at those who would otherwise consider OS/2, and will be offered – though not exclusively – on Tandy micros, which DEC also takes and re-badges.
