CompuServe Messages

Steve, I think the Unix world is _very_ worried about NT. Open computing has never been what it was supposed to be. Unix was and is fragmented into what are essentially propietary sub OSs. Motif and Open Look dueled for years – the goal supposedly to unify Unix at least as far as User interfaces were concerned – but also deeper than that. I don't think the feud _ever_ would have resolved without the looming threat of NT. Open Computing mag over the last 18 months has done a pretty good job of describing the situation. Even now, the unification process is bogged down. COSE is well behind schedule. Its CDE phase has been delayed again and again. Although Motif has apparently won, concession after concession has been given to Sun and Open Look integration into the project. HP has admitted that they seriously underestimated the problems of coordinating the various needs of IBM, Novell, Sun and themselves. I think eventually, the problems will get solved. But all this lost time is in Microsoft's favor. I don't think the Unix community finds the prospects of using NT all that palatable, but no one in the community who is being honest about the situation can deny that the NT situation is serious, nor can they deny that NT is not a contender. NT has the horsepower, and the single fact that its developer can get things done (if it wants to) while Unix partners argue endlessly about minute details, may make NT very desireable in the eyes of the bean counters. Rich