Xerox Corp has decided to hedge its bets in the Unix wars by joining both Unix International Inc and the Open Software Foundation – and William Lowe, who has scarcely had time to wash the Blue dye from his soul, explains that Our objective in joining both of these currently competing organisations is to represent customers’ major need for a single standard Unix operating environment. Until December, Lowe, now vice president, Xerox Development & Manufacturing was running IBM’s personal computer arm and IBM is of course a leading light in the Open Software Foundation that caused the Unix schism in the first place. Xerox also claimed controversially that its decision is supported by members in each of the two groups, such as Sun Microsystems in Unix International and Siemens in the Foundation, both of whom are promoting a single Unix standard. Xerox also said it would move its ViewPoint desktop and applications software, Xerox Network Services software and other document processing systems to converged Unix and Sun Sparc technology.
