102 lines
5.6 KiB
HTML
102 lines
5.6 KiB
HTML
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<title>UniForum Press Release LG #29</title>
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May 21st, 1998
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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UniForum Association Conference Hosts an Historic Meeting of the Minds Between
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the Linux Advocates and Unix Branding Organization
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Columbia, MD - An amazing thing happened at the UniForum Association's 1998
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Spring Conference in Ocean City, MD. During the unveiling of The Open
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Group's UNIX 98 specification to an audience that included leading Open
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Source advocates, members of the two groups spontaneously initiated frank,
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informal negotiations regarding the conformance of Linux to the UNIX 98 spec.
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Starting at 10 am on Wednesday, May 21st, The Open Group's Director of
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Branding Graham Bird, Chief Technical Officer Mike Lambert, and others began
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detailing UNIX 98 to workshop attendees. In the audience was Eric Raymond, an
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outspoken Linux advocate whose paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", was
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influential in Netscape's recent decision to take make the source code for
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their Communicator product suite available to the general public. About
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halfway into the workshop, after asking a number of detailed technical
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questions, Raymond asked the big one: What's it going to take to get the UNIX
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98 brand for Linux?
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Graham Bird quickly responded that The Open Group very much wants to see Linux
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get the UNIX 98 brand. A far-ranging discussion ensued, with both sides
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agreeing that high-end Unix server vendors will suffer if the low-end server
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market is lost to Windows NT. Additionally, if ISVs face an increasing base of
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clients with NT platforms, it's reasonable to expect that they'll consider
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ports to Unix a lower priority, and the number of commercial applications
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available on Unix platforms could dwindle. Since the Linux OS is proving to be
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increasingly stiff competition for NT in this marketspace, it's in the best
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interest of all Unix vendors for Linux to get branded so that it may compete
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more effectively and keep the low end UNIX 98-compliant.
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The two groups parted with affirmations to continue the dialogue and try to
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find a way to brand Linux.
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It's going to take some creativity to pull this off. In order to carry the
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Unix brand, an OS must purchase and pass rigorous testing suites provided by
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The Open Group, and must also pay licensing and royalty fees. Furthermore, The
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Open Group holds each branded vendor individually responsible for continuing
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to conform to the UNIX 98 spec. Since Linux is developed and maintained by a
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large, loose-knit community of volunteer developers over the Internet, it has
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no "vendor" in the traditional sense. A number of companies package Linux,
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with varying combinations of support, manuals, and proprietary software.
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The popularity of Linux has significantly increased in recent years, as it has
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matured and become easier to install; most Linux users have found that the
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mutual-aid forums on the Internet meet their support needs. Available on a
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number of platforms, it's proven to be most popular on inexpensive Intel-based
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PCs. Although some IS managers apparently hesitate to commit to a platform
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with no large corporation standing behind it, Linux has been showing up in
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some surprising places. Furniture maker Ikea has deployed Linux throughout its
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European offices, and a parallel-processing network of over 100 Linux boxes
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was used to do graphical rendering for the movie, "Titanic." NASA has been
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using similar arrays for years, and Fermi Lab is reportedly planning to build
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a much larger "supercomputer" in the near future.
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Linux developers employ an intriguing method of software development: release
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early source code publicly, and use thousands of Internet-based volunteers to
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help test it and propose bug fixes and new features. This methodology, known
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as "Open Source," results in remarkably fast release cycles, which have
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produced a robust OS from scratch in just a few years. Although it is just now
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becoming widely acknowledged, development methods like Open Source have been
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in use for decades; for example, over one million Internet servers on the net
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today serving web pages with Apache, software that has been developed across
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the net with source code available for free.
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Earlier this year, Eric Raymond detailed the Open Source methodology in his
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paper, arguing that it's a superior way to write software. His paper found its
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way into the upper reaches of Netscape, where some employees had already been
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advocating the concept. Netscape subsequently decided to use the Open Source
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model for future releases of Communicator. Just last week, Corel Computer
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Corp. also announced that they will be releasing the source code of the Linux
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portion of their NetWinder OS for network computers. Eid Eid, President of
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Corel Computer Corp., gave a keynote speech at the UniForum conference on
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Tuesday, May 19th.
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The freely available Linux OS is technically not Unix, and is properly
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described as a Unix-like OS. Since there is no central point of distribution,
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its installed base is particularly difficult to estimate. Bob Young of Red Hat
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Software, which packages and supports a Linux distribution, gives a very rough
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estimate of 5-10 million.
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For further information, contact Alan Fedder, President of the UniForum
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Association, at: (410) 715-9500; or via email at afedder@uniforum.org.
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