Unix International Inc is trying to head off further fragmentation in the industry by acting as peacemaker between new desktop rivals SunSoft Inc and Unix System Laboratories Inc, anticipating some compatibility issues before the mud-slinging turns nasty. Unix International has drawn up a statement of System V.4 commonality that it says it is trying to get both Sun and Unix Labs to agree on. It includes mutual conformance to a proposed new Application Binary Interface that Unix International members are working on and should be ready in the next three months. Unix International is rightly concerned that constantly harping on about the incompatibilities between Destiny and Solaris will only demoralise software houses and lose applications for Unix. SunSoft is apparently reluctant to align itself to closely with the Unix International Roadmap, seen as too closely aligned with Unix Labs. Unix Labs and SunSoft are pledged to continue talking to ensure interface compatibility in new areas of the system software technology above the operating system. SunSoft already has a burr under its saddle about the recent BusinessWeek article on Unix Labs, based on interviews with Unix Labs president Roel Pieper, that suggested that all Unix applications run on Destiny – not to mention the unfounded BusinessWeek claim that Sun would support Destiny. That’s simply more fat on the fire. Into this simmering fracas strides Unix International waving its statement of System V.4 commonality. SunSoft officials like Jim Billmaier were surprised that the eight points included in the statement were committed to paper, believing them only discussion items for an independent software vendor rally held at PC Expo in New York City last month. Billmaier indicated SunSoft had little difficulty with six of the eight points, non-controversial items such as support of open systems, industry standards interoperability and maintaining applications binary interface compatibility between Solaris and Destiny. SunSoft, however, draws the line at promising to evolve Solaris according to the Unix International Roadmap and had those words excised. The Roadmap is too identified with Unix Labs, which is now Sun’s competitor, Billmaier said. The proposed ABI, designed to ensure binary compatibility of applications within an architecture and offer a common denominator environment that all can work with, embraces media formats, TCP/IP, X Window System version 11.5, perhaps multi-media and extensions to the graphical user interface. This last point is a touchy issue with Sun, which wants nothing to do with Unix Labs’s Moolit toolkit.

Politically correct

However, Unix International member companies, who variously use both Motif and Open Look, want libraries for both included in the ABI. Unix International is also hopeful that the ABI, when finalised, will include some kind of desktop commonality. Again another highly touchy point for SunSoft, but even Billmaier allows some concessions could be made here – but only if pieces of Sun’s more advanced technology, which is moving for instance to objects, is adopted – a point Unix International at least seems to understand. Watered, down, politically correct Unix International president Peter Cunningham believes the new ABI could mean up to 75% commonality between the systems for the software programmer, initially on the client side and then moving to the server. However, it does depend somewhat on the application involved: character-based being the easiest, graphical applications harder and the new generation of graphical programs the most particular. SunSoft, which foresees new multiple binaries in Unix’s future, is anxious to stress all the current and mostly anticipated differences in its system that independent software vendors have to take account of, claiming that developers want their programs running at maximum performance rather than in some watered down but politically correct fashion.