The Open Software Foundation failed last week to set pricing on the Distributed Computing Environment technologies it adopted over 10 weeks ago. The consortium, which has taken some flak over previous pricing decisions, now says the announcement will be made September 21. In an effort to get it right the first time, it said, it had a marketing study done – by a consulting firm it declined to identify – comparing the prices and licensing terms of similar or related technologies – source, binary and modules – and making recommendations for the Foundation’s own price list. The alternative Unix club, which has also reportedly sought input from its membership on the terms they need, expects to finalise its prices internally this week. It will then run the schedule past its members and the companies providing the Distributed Computing technologies. What the Foundation was able to trot out last week was its first snapshot of the new product: some 3,000 pages of shrink-wrapped documentation and specifications for program planning plus a tape of at least some of the source code of all the various pieces of the Distributed Computing Environment pie. Foundation officials estimated that perhaps 10% to 20% of the integration needed to bring the product to market has been done. A team of over 100 people has been brought together to work on it. It was unclear from Foundation’s answer to the question Does it compile? whether it does or not. A second snapshot is due in October. A developer’s kit will become available in December. A spokeswoman also indicated that the Distributed Computing Environment will probably continue to be called just that – the Foundation had wanted to dub it Ensemble but found that the name has already been taken.
