The meeting of 84 ActiveX stakeholders held in New York yesterday voted, not surprisingly, to turn specifications for Microsoft Corp object technologies over to the Open Group, the open systems standards and technology development body that incorporates X/Open Co Ltd, the Open Software Foundation and soon UniForum too (CI No 3,010). 63 companies voted in favor of the Open Group proposal while 19 voted for the creation of a new Microsoft-lead body to guide development of the specifications. There were two abstentions, one them Netscape Communications Corp, which – effectively channeling for Object Management Group (OMG) boss Chris Stone – was decidedly unhappy at the lack of provision for creating interoperability between objects using ActiveX and OMG’s alternative Corba Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP). The vote means that for the foreseeable future there will be two incompatible object models available to application developers. While outgoing Open Group boss Jim Bell said he’d welcome the opportunity to expand the group’s relationship with OMG, neither he or Microsoft group VP Paul Maritz could offer anything concrete to the meeting beyond suggesting if there is genuine desire for Corba interoperability then we will examine it. The proposal adopted at the meeting will see the creation of an Active Group within the Open Group, controlled by a steering committee appointed by, and including Microsoft. The Active Group will license ActiveX technologies including the Common Object Model (COM) and Distributed COM (DCOM) and Microsoft’s royalty-free MS-RPC variant of the OSF Distributed Computing Environment remote procedure call, plus the other storage, registry, security, monitors and automation specifications that Redmond turns over, supposedly 750,000 lines of code and validation suites representing over $100m of investment. The licensing terms, like so much else, have not yet been decided. The Open Group says it will create one of its Pre-Structured Technology projects to house development of ActiveX specifications by the end of October. The first meeting of the steering committee is scheduled for the second week of November. á