Unix System Laboratories Inc and Santa Cruz Operation were patting each other on the back last week, their leaders having emerged from a late night session in the midst of Santa Cruz Forum with what they called a workable plan to come together. For months Santa Cruz has resisted adopting System V.4 even though company co-founder Doug Michels recently told our sister paper Unigram.X he had finally bitten the ideological bullet and was prepared to step out on the System V.4 road provided he could get the right terms. At SCO Forum the pair announced a strategic interface agreement-in-principle that will have Santa Cruz licensing for a fair price all the System V.4.2 technology surrounding application development tools such as compilers, debuggers, C++ and linkers (CI No 1,992). Unix Labs president Roel Pieper told Unigram that the pact will enable Santa Cruz and Unix Labs to present a common uniform environment to independent software vendors. This environment will apparently appear in a future version of Santa Cruz Unix, however, it is unclear whether that software will be System V.4. Pieper said it was not in Santa Cruz’s best interest to announce it was going to System V.4 now since it had no product and the admission would kill its business. He explained that he was interested in Santa Cruz being as strong as possible for the mutual fight against Microsoft Corp. He also characterised the proposed agreement as a practicable manageable first step toward harmony and indicated that he and Michels had formulated concrete and exact steps for the future. It’s not important whether it’s System V.4 or System V.5, he insisted, it just means Unix will be bigger.
