Novell Opens Unix

Dom Pancucci

Novell has transferred the Unix trademark to the international X/Open standards organization. The transfer, which was announced last October, when combined with other standards efforts, may yet result in multiple implementations of Unix that conform to a single specification.

Novell's transfer of the Unix trademark to X/Open is, said Kanwal Rekhi, executive vice president of Novell's Unix Systems Group, the next logical step for Unix. (In September, over 75 companies, including Sun, Hewlett-Packard, DEC, IBM, Novell, and SCO, agreed to adopt a single set of 1170 API calls.) X/Open will be responsible for certifying that vendors' operating systems meet the Spec 1170 definition of Unix.

The idea behind the common API is to let developers write to a single set of memory, file- system, and other kernel-level cal ls so that they need to do only a source-level recompilation to support another Unix platform. With multiple compatible implementations of Unix, vendors will then compete on the basis of price, quality, service, and reliability, or as X/Open's president and CEO Geoff Morris said, "a single specification, a single brand, and as much innovation as the industry can deliver."

The movement toward a unified Unix will continue throughout this year. SunSoft, IBM, and SCO officials say they expect to have versions of Unix that comply with Spec 1170 this year. But Morris said that the suite of software tests to verify Spec 1170 compliance will likely not be available until the end of the year. Until then, there is an interim specification that says companies must use USL operating-systems technology, conform to SVID (System V Interface Definition), and conform to XPG3 (X/Open Portability Guide) or XPG4.

Novell will not give up its right to license Unix System V source code to other vendors, but once the t est suites are available, Unix vendors will no longer be required to use Unix code developed at USL/Novell.