French operating systems house Chorus Systemes SA of Paris thinks it has developed what the next generation of Unix ought to be – as reported here a year ago (CI No 1,267), and is approaching both AT&T and the Open Software Foundation, product in hand, seeking their endorsements. It also says it is talking at various levels with almost every conceivable US and European hardware vendor about taking its real-time distributed software OEM. Chorus has already announced a deal with the UK’s GEC-Plessey Telecommunications Ltd for the next generation of System X digital telephone exchanges (CI No 1,357) and with French X-terminal maker Gipsi SA. Two other major deals with US and European computer firms remain unanounced. To close other accounts, four year-old Chorus, barely more than a start-up despite its $6.5m in revenues this year, has launched a US subsidiary, Chorus Systems Inc, in Beaverton, Oregon and hired Bob Anundson, ex-president of 88open, as vice-president, marketing and business development. The Chorus sales pitch maintains that Unix, as currently structured has run out of steam. To extend its life another 10 or 15 years requires extensive modularisation using a microkernel approach, something that Foundation vice-president of research and advanced development Ira Goldstein has been preaching for some time. It was also exactly what AT&T and Sun planned to do in Phase III of its Unix development, once referred to as System V.5 – an effort shot down in the Foundation/Unix International controversy. OSF/2, which is to be stripped of all AT&T code and made free of AT&T royalties, has always been referred to as a research effort and dismissed by some as more of a pipe dream. However, Chorus co-founder Hubert Zimmerman – revered in France as the father of Open Systems – and US president Will Neuhauser say work on OSF/2 is progressing. In fact, they say, earlier this summer the Foundation quietly started an open technology review, or quasi Request for Technology, out of its offices in Grenoble searching for existing OSF/2-style technologies. Chorus claims to have a three-year lead on any possible competitors and the only commercialised microkernel available. Therefore it should be a strong contender. Although currently based on System V.3.2 and going to System V.4, the Chorus system could easily be stripped of any offending AT&T code and rewritten, Zimmerman said.

Bugbear

Chorus’ immediate difficulties with the Foundation have been drawing Goldstein out on the subject of terms and conditions, a bugbear that has haunted the Foundation through all its technology requests. Zimmerman and Neuhauser say Goldstein wants to put OSF/2 in the public domain, a highly unappetising prospect for any independent software vendor. Chorus’ response, they say, has been to go to the Foundation sponsors, some of whom now fail to see the value of putting OSF/2 in the public domain. Goldstein did not return calls by press time. Chorus is also talking to AT&T Unix System Laboratories about the rival camp adopting Chorus as the basis of the modular system it eventually develops. Unix System vice-president Mike DeFazio indicated any notion of a tie-up is premature, although the lab is kicking the tyres on the Chorus operating syste, looking at what it is the French have and how they did it. DeFazio said that that part of the Unix International roadmap would be laid out a year from now. In the meantime, what he has seen of Chorus shows some promising technology and at least some elements of it could be used, perhaps blended with pieces of AT&T’s own Plan Nine work (CI No 1,473). As for Chorus, it looks very good, he said, I have a lot of respect for it. – Maureen O’Gara