News Round-Up
Elaine Babcock presented this item (members and attendees - see slides), covering:
- The published results of the members surveys conducted in Q4/2003 on meeting
locations/frequency/themes, and on member contributions towards agendas and speakers in
future meetings
- The upcoming election of member representatives to the Board of Directors of The Open
Group. The closing date for nominations is April 30th 2004.
- The three brochures that the Customer Council has produced (copies of Version 2 of these
brochures were available in this meeting) on:
- Governance of The Open Group & Being a Member Director
- How to Start New Activities in The Open Group
- Open Standards and Certification
*NIX Proposal
Bill Estrem said (members and attendees - see slides)
that over the past year he has heard members expressing concern that UNIX, POSIX, and
Linux may be diverging in key areas, and this could result in disadvantaging customers in
ways similar to what happened during the "UNIX wars" between competing suppliers
in the 1980-90s. Bill saw a desired future state as one where these three platforms are
conformant to a single "metaspecification" or profile in which the unique
features of each are preserved, and conflicts are identified and resolved where possible.
The resulting benefits would be that migration between *NIX platforms would be simplified,
customers' investment would be better preserved, and software vendors' porting problems
would be significantly reduced. Bill listed the core components as involving a
specification, a test suite, a trademark, and a logo. He went on to list the core
documents, processes, and certification program that he believes would be involved. In the
certification program, leading issues would include who would own it, who would pay for
it, and who would benefit from it.
In an exercise prior to this meeting, Bill had solicited feedback from Open Group
members on this *NIX proposal, and he summarized this feedback in two of his slides - one
covering responses from Supplier members, and another covering a Customer response.
He noted that perhaps the audience in this meeting did not include some key constituencies
that are most impacted by this proposal, but nevertheless he hoped to gather members'
views and perhaps support to take this proposal forward. In closing, Bill said he felt
honor-bound to suggest a logo for *NIX - and noting existing logos in this field, his
closing slide offered his own suggestion.
In the ensuing Q&A, the following issues arose:
Q: Has any feedback been gathered from the Linux community, and from the people who own
the UNIX specification and its certification programs? If so what are their views?
A: Bill said he has consulted with The Open Group's UNIX program manager on this, and
taken on board the feedback, which essentially is that this is a very significant work
item that would require substantial resources, but if there is sufficient support
demonstrated from the suppliers and ISV community for this work then it can be taken up.
Comment: This is a very good item to bring up and Bill should be thanked for doing so.
UNIX and POSIX convergence work is already underway in the Austin Group so that is
continuing steadily, API by API, and will eventually result in a harmonized standard.
Linux standardization is very different however. Linux is available from several competing
distributions which run primarily on Intel hardware - he thought up to 90% of the market -
and these distributions include versions down at the binary level to run on this hardware.
The Linux user community is already quite strongly partisan for whichever Linux
distribution source they have chosen to date, and this community shows no signs of
demanding conformance to the Linux Standard Base (LSB). So, hopes that this Linux user
community might coalesce into a unified voice demanding conformance to the LSB, or even
leaning towards showing a clear preference for a particular distribution, appear very slim
at present. It therefore seems clear that the market for Linux has little interest at
present in calling for convergence of the LSB with the UNIX and POSIX standards, or for
certification that the Linux distribution they buy is conformant to the LSB.
A: Bill acknowledged this helpful assessment.
Comment: A member challenged the claim that 90% of Linux distributions are running on
Intel hardware, counter-claiming that about 40% of Linux distributions are running on
Apple machines.
Comment: To make this proposal attractive it is essential to focus on what value we aim
to deliver, and to whom. Saying it is a good thing to do is too vague and will not attract
the support and contribution that will be needed to undertake such a large work item.
