mouser@Portia.Stanford.EDU (Michael Wang) (09/22/88)
In article <417@nikhefk.UUCP> paulm@nikhefk.UUCP (Paul Molenaar) write: > A recent usenet posting stated that IBM payed $10 million for the use > of the user interface developed by NeXt. > > It aroused a lot of curiosity at my end. For what machines does IBM > need this user interface? It has the Presentation Manager for OS/2? Right? > What's so special about this interface? Any1 any information on this > subject? [ stuff deleted ] In article <417@nikhefk.UUCP> paulm@nikhefk.UUCP (Paul Molenaar) write: > A recent usenet posting stated that IBM payed $10 million for the use > of the user interface developed by NeXt. > > It aroused a lot of curiosity at my end. For what machines does IBM > need this user interface? It has the Presentation Manager for OS/2? Right? > What's so special about this interface? Any1 any information on this > subject? [ stuff deleted ] For those of you who are not keeping up with the news in the UNIX world, here is some background on why IBM purchased the rights to use NeXT's user interface. Currently in the UNIX world there are many different versions of UNIX including BSD 4.2 and 4.3, System V Release 2 and Release 3, Xenix, Ultrix, AIX, HP/UX, A/UX, Sun OS, and on and on. While most of the UNIX's are either based on BSD 4.2/4.3 or System V, there are enough differences between them that porting applications between them is not as easy as some people would lead you to believe. In the interest of creating one unified UNIX that incorporates all the good features of the current UNIXs, AT&T bought a majority stake in Sun Microsystems to help them merge the different UNIX together and create one and only one industry standard. Sun has had previous experience in this since their Sun OS is a merge of BSD 4.3 and System V Release 3. So far so good. However, after the AT&T and Sun announcemnt, other major computer manufacturers in the UNIX market were upset at AT&T, thinking that AT&T was going for a monopoly in the UNIX market and that Sun would have a unfair advantage since any new version of UNIX developed by AT&T and Sun would be optimized for Sun's new SPARC processor. This group of manufacturers, which includes IBM, HP and Digital, decided to form their own group, called the Open Software Foundation (OSF), to create their own merge of UNIX into one standard. In return for IBM participation in OSF, the group decided to base their new UNIX on a future version of IBM's AIX (IBM's UNIX OS). Now to finish the story, IBM bought the rights to use NeXT's user interface so that they could use it in their development with the OSF group and in their own versions of AIX. In effect, if the OSF UNIX standard succeeds and AT&T and Sun's fail, then the NeXT user interface would become the industry standard among UNIX computers - very good incentive for Steve Jobs to sell the interface to IBM. Editor's Notes: I haven't seen the NeXT user interface but a couple people who have seen it tell me that it is in fact BETTER than the Macintosh user interface. Steve Jobs had the advantage of starting from scratch and improving things that would to difficult to change now on the Macintosh. Only a couple more weeks to the NeXT announcement (October 12), when we'll all get to seen what the machine can do. -Michael Wang +--------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael Wang | Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 | |--------------+------------------------------------------------------------| | ARPAnet, CSNET, BITNET, Internet: mouser@portia.stanford.edu | | UUCP: ...decwrl!portia.stanford.edu!mouser AppleLink: ST0064 | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
mouser@Portia.Stanford.EDU (Michael Wang) (09/22/88)
In article <3705@Portia.Stanford.EDU> I write: > standard. In return for IBM participation in OSF, the group decided to base > UNIX OS). Unfortunately the words after 'base' probably flew off the end of your screen. Here is what the sentence should say: In return for IBM's participation in OSF, the group decided to base their new UNIX on a future version of IBM's AIX (IBM's UNIX OS). * Sigh * Oh well, nobody's perfect. Also in article <455@infmx.UUCP> greggy@infmx.UUCP (greg yachuk) writes: > According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle (comical?), the > NeXT interface is to be used on the PC/RT. This information is correct since the main OS of the IBM PC/RT is AIX. -Michael Wang
kmw@ardent.UUCP (Ken Wallich) (09/23/88)
Since this has nothing whatsover to do with the Mac, and in fact nothing to do will Apple, I have set the followup to comp.misc. We should continue further discussion there. In article <3705@Portia.Stanford.EDU> mouser@portia.stanford.edu (Michael Wang) writes: > >Now to finish the story, IBM bought the rights to use NeXT's user interface >so that they could use it in their development with the OSF group and in >their own versions of AIX. In effect, if the OSF UNIX standard succeeds and >AT&T and Sun's fail, then the NeXT user interface would become the industry >standard among UNIX computers - very good incentive for Steve Jobs to sell >the interface to IBM. > I have closely followed the AT&T/Sun merge as well as all the OSF information. I've also followed NeXT, as much as possible. I wonder if you could give us more information on how you reached this conclusion. I haven't seen the specifics of NeXT's licensing agreement with IBM, but it seem very unlikely to me that NeXT would spend all of this time and resources building it, and then simply give IBM a free and clear license to do anything they wanted with it, (including *donate* it to OSF) even for a few tens of millions of dollars. If NeXT *gave* their interface away, and their interface was the focal point of what made their machine better than everyone elses, why would we buy their box? Of course, we don't really know WHAT the focal point of the machine is, except that they want to own the "higher education" market. OSF has a RFT for user interface standards pending now. If NeXT wishes to submit it's interface, OSF would be happy to look at it, with or without an agreement with IBM. I don't see how IBM getting rights to use the interface has anything to do with OSF adopting it. Remember, DEC has its own set of User Interface specifications they have submitted to OSF, as has AT&T/Sun with OPEN LOOK (their caps, not mine). DEC belongs to OSF, and they have commited just as much money and effort to it as IBM has, and have an equal vote on the board. IBM cannot say "OSF is going to use this interface, because we want them to". I could easily be missing some critical piece of the puzzle, so if you have any more concrete information I'd love to be enlightened -- Ken Wallich Ardent Computer Corp {uunet, ubvax, decwrl, hplabs}!ardent!kmw Sunnyvale, California, USA "if we weren't all crazy, we'd all go INSANE"
merchant@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Peter Merchant) (09/24/88)
In article <455@infmx.UUCP> greggy@infmx.UUCP (greg yachuk) writes: >In article <417@nikhefk.UUCP> paulm@nikhefk.UUCP (Paul Molenaar) writes: >>A recent usenet posting stated that IBM payed $10 million for the use >>of the user interface developed by NeXt. >>It aroused a lot of curiosity at my end. For what machines does IBM >>need this user interface? > >According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle (comical?), the >NeXT interface is to be used on the PC/RT. It is supposed to be used with IBM AIX (not to be confused with AUX), which is IBM's version of Unix for the IBM RT. They also have AIX for the PS/2 Model 80 (and I think the 70, too). The Presentation Manager is being developed by Microsoft. There is talk of using PARC's latest concept, called "Rooms". From the description in InfoWorld, it is much like the concept of having multiple Desktops for different projects (which makes sense to me--whoever heard of a trashcan on a desktop?!) --- "Hold on to the night." Peter Merchant (merchant@eleazar.UUCP) (Peter.G.Merchant@dartmouth.edu)
straka@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Straka) (09/27/88)
In article <3705@Portia.Stanford.EDU> mouser@portia.stanford.edu (Michael Wang) writes: >In the interest of creating one unified UNIX that incorporates all the good >features of the current UNIXs, AT&T bought a majority stake in Sun ^^^^^^^^ Point of information: The stake was a minority one, ~~15% +-5%. If AT&T had bought a MAJORITY interest in Sun, it would have effectively controlled the company lock, stock & barrel (whatever that means). -- Rich Straka ihnp4!ihlpf!straka Avoid BrainDamage: MSDOS - just say no!
ned@moivre.ACA.MCC.COM (Ned Nowotny) (10/01/88)
In article <6258@ihlpf.ATT.COM> straka@ihlpf.UUCP (55223-Straka,R.J.) writes: >In article <3705@Portia.Stanford.EDU> mouser@portia.stanford.edu (Michael Wang) writes: >>In the interest of creating one unified UNIX that incorporates all the good >>features of the current UNIXs, AT&T bought a majority stake in Sun > ^^^^^^^^ >Point of information: The stake was a minority one, ~~15% +-5%. If AT&T had >bought a MAJORITY interest in Sun, it would have effectively controlled the >company lock, stock & barrel (whatever that means). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Think flintlock rifle. -- Ned Nowotny (ned@mcc.com or {ihnp4,seismo,ucb-vax,gatech}!cs.utexas.edu!pp!ned)