X/Open accepts lead role as keeper of COSE standards
The Common Open Software Environment’s systems management technology will be determined by X/Open Co Ltd’s existing systems management workgroup, a committee that will include all the current the Common Open Software Environment companies. The decision was made last week at a planning process review the COSE people and the Open Software Foundation held on April 7 at the X/Open offices in Menlo Park, California, one of many meetings that have been taking place lately. However, the meeting also established the desktop as COSE’s first priority, something that already seemed clear at COSE’s announcement last month. Much of the meeting was apparently given over to the specific role that X/Open will play. X/Open in turn explained the inner working of its fast track process: a specification that’s very clean and well-written takes at least six months, changes after review tack on another 10 weeks. A normal X/Open process takes 12 to 18 months. Motif is a prime candidate for the fast track, although it will require minor work to integrate it into the X/Open Portability Guide. X/Open is expected to do the Portability Guide integration work on all COSE specifications. An X/Open spokesman said that COSE now better understands the task, resources and overall timeframe. COSE continues to resist any designation as a group or collective appellation as the COSE companies, ostensibly because it expects to expand its membership.
DEC prepares for talks but is reviewing the situation
Maynard, Massachusetts-based Digital Equipment Corp indicates that it is expecting to have conversations with friends at Hewlett-Packard Co in the next few weeks about its participation in the Common Open Software Environment. Like NCR Corp, it needs to collect more data on what the gang is really doing, figure out the structure and find out how COSE would want DEC to participate; also like NCR, if the effort is primarily concerned with the desktop, then DEC would not be very interested.
Vague feelings of unease start to grow around mechanics, true agenda of the COSE founder companies
NCR Corp is being cautious about giving the Common Open Software Environment its endorsement. On the surface it has no problem with it – it either has or is moving towards the technologies at issue, but it wants more information before it lends any support. Everything, it says, is not exactly crystal clear. For instance, it would like to know whether an endorsing company has to adopt everything COSE ratifies or whether it can pick and choose. It also wants to know what the position of Unix International Inc, which it strongly supports, is going to be. Then too, it would like COSE to indicate exactly what it would like a company such as NCR to say. It will be a few weeks and several meetings before it has established an official position. It has to pick its way through the minefield of NT and Unix and estimate whether COSE is bigger than just the desktop. How cosy (or cozy) is COSE? Not yet a month old and apparently there is concern in some quarters of the industry that Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp (Sun Microsystems Inc to a lesser extent) may kidnap the promised system and twist it to their own advantage. Hewlett-Packard and IBM seem to be taking a vanguard position in this thing and are pretty cosy themselves. There are apparently many meetings going on, COSE having been divided into technology, product management and business sectors. However, there is word that not everyone knows what meetings are scheduled or is being asked along. It could be altogether innocent but suspicions have been raised. Companies outside COSE’s inner circle also fret about how it is selecting technologies. Members of Unix International have approached it to suggest that the true blue Unix club get a piece of the COSE requirement process, and word is that Unix International is having informal discussions with the COSE crew. If there is a twist to the plot, then it is nowhere more apparent than at the window management level where, it seems,
Hewlett-Packard is determined to make its Visual User Environment stick. We know Hewlett-Packard and IBM Corp are working on an early sample version of the Common Open Software Environment code, which will include interface widgets, and VUE look and feel dominated the COSE desktop shown at the orginal announcement. The VUE desktop manager lost out to IXI Ltd’s X.desktop manager in the failed Advanced Computing Environment initiative and Hewlett is said to be determined not to lose this time around.
Icons and bars
It will be offering a COSE-compliant version of VUE to the other COSE founders. Indeed, SunSoft Inc is said to have taken VUE’s virtual workspace – though not the icons and bars themselves and is thought to have hired Motif experts from the Open Software Foundation and elsewhere to help it build a Common Open Software Environment desktop toolkit. At least one other COSE firm is worried that with Hewlett having the ear of the larger COSE companies, its own technology won’t get a look in. It believes that unless the final COSE specification is very tight, and goes right down to things such as icons and bars, then there is certain to be a wide variety of very different COSE interfaces on the market. Trying to stay ahead of the game now that Unix System Laboratories Inc is soon to have the weight of Novell Inc behind it, Santa Cruz Operation Inc – in conjunction with its IXI division – says it will begin to offer a fully integrated Common Open Software Environment system as soon as possible, something it believes few outfits have the resources to do. It will obviously buy in many ready-made COSE components – including networking and the Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment – and use the interfaces that will be made available through the COSE specification. As with its intended role in the failed ACE initiative, Santa Cruz says it will do all the required integration work to become a one-stop COSE shop. Products – announcements are promised over the next few months – will ship direct and to OEM customers. Santa Cruz doesn’t admit to be working on a COSE version of Microsoft Corp’s Windows NT, but says it is technically possible to make NT look like a COSE implementation. SunSoft now has three different tool kits for building user interfaces on its list. Development of the old NeWS toolkit has been frozen ahead of its metamorphosis into Adobe Systems Inc’s Display PostScript. Development of XView, the SunView-to-Open Windows transition toolkit, has been halted, although the firm will continue to bug-fix and support it. Likewise, further development of Open Look as presently constituted is being discontinued, although there will be a new release in the autumn incorporating the COSE specifications and X Window 11.5.
