At least one highly placed official inside the Unix Software Operation is beginning to despair that the so called unity talks between the AT&T unit, Unix International and the Open Software Foundation will ever come to anything. According to him, some of the Foundation’s founders (among them IBM), as well as some leery AT&T friends inside Unix International, just can’t countenance the idea – given their own business imperatives and could throw up a whole bevy of seemingly rational reasons to impede it. If they could come to some agreement, which on Tuesday night of UniForum reportedly seemed faint, AT&T would be willing to part with a majority stake in Unix Software Operation. If not, as the Unix Software Operation official speculated, then a minority equity deal, with some Software Foundation members among the shareholders, would probably be cut. Rumour has it that AT&T has valued Unix Software Operation at $400m, and knows for a fact that it could get more from certain unidentified people that would either deep six Unix, squeeze it dry or impede its progress in the marketplace (they wouldn’t be Blue by any chance?). Placement of a minority of the shares would make it easier for the Unix Software Operation to retain its ties to the Unix developers over at Bell Laboratories, and might forestall key personnel from quitting. Current expectations inside the Software Operation and Unix International are that something will happen – at least along the equity front – this quarter. Other sources feel that the Foundation, buoyed up with the launch of its first snapshot of OSF/1 – see below – now feels that it does have a product, and so is beginning to dig in its heels. Meanwhile, the party line at UniForum was to minimise the differences between the two camps. Using almost identical phrasing, Foundation chief David Tory at the announcement of the OSF/1 snapshot and Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive John Young during the keynote speech on Wednesday, both insisted that to a large extent unity had already been achieved, having snuck up on us before anybody noticed. And in London last week, while Jean-Claude Monney, also DEC’s X/Open and Open Software Foundation European representative, did not say how peacemaking talks between the two camps were progressing, for Locus Computing Corp, which shared the DEC platform and is deeply involved in both groups’ distributed computing projects, European general manager John Wilson said we will see Unix International and the Open Software Foundation reconciled this year.
