Open Software Foundation: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|Nonprofit foundation}}

The '''Open Software Foundation''' ('''OSF''') was a not-for-profit [[consortium|industry consortium]] for creating an [[open standard]] for an implementation of the [[operating system]] [[Unix]]. It was formed in 1988<ref>{{cite press release

|title=New Foundation to Advance Software Standards, Develop and Provide Open Software Environment

|publisher=Open Software Foundation

|date=May 17, 1988

|url=http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.questions/msg/55d36e086c735309?

|access-date=2007-07-31

}}</ref> and merged with [[X/Open]] in 1996, to become [[The Open Group]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://tech-insider.org/unix/research/1996/0214.html |title=X/Open and OSF Join to Create The Open Group |website=tech-insider.org |access-date=2018-12-04}}</ref>

Despite the similarities in name, OSF was unrelated to the [[Free Software Foundation]] (FSF, also based in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]]), or the [[Open Source Initiative]] (OSI).

The organization was first proposed by [[Armando Stettner]] of [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] (DEC)atan invitation-only meeting hosted by DEC for several [[Unix]] system vendors in January 1988 (called the "Hamilton Group", since the meeting was held at DEC's offices on [[Palo Alto]]'s Hamilton Avenue).<ref>{{cite news

|last=Marshall |first=Martin

|title=Apollo VP Gives Inside Look at OSF Formation

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9z4EAAAAMBAJ&q=hamilton+group+osf&pg=PA33

|work=[[InfoWorld]]

|page=33

|date=June 20, 1988

|access-date=2011-04-13

}}</ref> It was intended as an organization for joint development, mostly in response to a perceived threat of "merged UNIX system" efforts by [[AT&T Corporation]] and [[Sun Microsystems]]. After discussion during the meeting, the proposal was tabled so that members of the Hamilton Group could broach the idea of a joint development effort with Sun and AT&T. In the meantime, Stettner was asked to write an organization charter. That charter was formally presented to Apollo, HP, IBM and others after Sun and AT&T rejected the overture by the Hamilton Group members.

The foundation's original sponsoring members were [[Apollo Computer]], [[Groupe Bull]], [[Digital Equipment Corporation]], [[Hewlett-Packard]], [[IBM]], [[Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme|Nixdorf Computer]], and [[Siemens AG]], sometimes called the "Gang of Seven". Later sponsor members included [[Philips]] and [[Hitachi]] with the broader general membership growing to more than a hundred companies.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://tech-insider.org/unix/research/1988/0517.html |title=New Foundation to Advance Software Standards, Develop and Provide Open Software Environment |website=tech-insider.org |access-date=2018-12-04}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://tech-insider.org/unix/research/1988/0629.html |title=Philips Newest Sponsor For Open Software Foundation |website=tech-insider.org |access-date=2018-12-04}}</ref> It was registered under the U.S. [[National Cooperative Research and Production Act|National Cooperative Research Act]] of 1984,<ref>{{cite web

|title=First Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion 97-1807.01A

|url=http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=97-1807.01A

|date=September 4, 1998

|publisher=First Circuit Court of Appeals

|access-date=2009-07-19

|url-status=dead

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613183614/http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=97-1807.01A

|archive-date=June 13, 2011

}}</ref> which reduces potential antitrust liabilities of research joint ventures and standards development organizations.

The sponsors gave OSF significant funding, a broad mandate (the so-called "Seven Principles"), substantial independence, and support from sponsor senior management. Senior operating executives from the sponsoring companies served on OSF's initial Board of Directors. One of the Seven Principles was declaration of an "Open Process" whereby OSF staff would create Request for Proposals for source technologies to be selected by OSF, in a vendor neutral process. The selected technology would be licensed by the OSF to the public. Membership in the organization gave member companies a voice in the process for requirements. At the founding, five Open Process projects were named.

The organization was seen as a response to the collaboration between AT&T and Sun on [[UNIX System V]] Release 4, and a fear that other vendors would be locked out of the standardization process. This led [[Scott McNealy]] of Sun to quip that "OSF" really stood for "Oppose Sun Forever".<ref name="Southwick1999">{{cite book |last=Southwick |first=Karen |year=1999 |title=High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems |url=https://archive.org/details/highnoon00kare |url-access=registration |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-471-29713-0 |page=[https://archive.org/details/highnoon00kare/page/76 76]}}</ref> The competition between the opposing versions of Unix systems became known as the [[Unix wars]]. AT&T founded the [[Unix International]] (UI) project management organization later that year as a counter-response to the OSF. UI was led by Peter Cunningham, formerly of [[International Computers Limited]] (ICL), as its president. UI had many of the same characteristics of OSF, with the exception of a software development staff. [[Unix System Laboratories]] (USL) filled the software development role, and UI was based in [[Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey]] to be close to USL.

The executive staff of the Open Software Foundation included David Tory, President, formerly of [[Computer Associates]];

<ref>{{cite press release

|title=Network World Industry Update

|publisher=Network World

|date=November 21, 1988

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oBIEAAAAMBAJ&q=David+Tory+named+to+the+open+software+foundation&pg=PA11

|access-date=2020-12-08

}}</ref>

Norma Clarke, Vice-President Human Resources formerly of [[Mitre Corporation|Mitre]]; Marty Ford, Vice-President Finance, formerly of DEC; Ira Goldstein, Vice-President Research Institute, formerly of Hewlett-Packard; Roger Gourd, Vice-President Engineering, formerly of DEC; Alex Morrow, Vice-President Strategy, formerly of IBM; Donal O'Shea, Vice-President of Operations, formerly of [[UniSoft]]. This staff added more than 300 employees in less than two years. The organization's headquarters were at 11 Cambridge Center in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]], intentionally located in the neighborhood of the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] along with remote development offices in Munich, Germany and Grenoble, France and field offices in Brussels and Tokyo. To the public, the organization appeared to be nothing more than an advocacy group; in reality it included a distributed software development organization.

An independent security software company - Addamax, filed suit in 1990 against OSF and its sponsors charging that OSF was engaged in anticompetitive practices. The court delivered a grant of summary judgment to OSF (152 F.3d 48, 50 (1st Cir.1998).

<ref>{{cite web

|title=ADDAMAX CORP. v. OPEN SOFTWARE FOUNDATION, INC.

|url=https://www.leagle.com/decision/1998200152f3d481195

|date=September 4, 1998

|publisher=Leagale

|access-date=2020-12-08

}}</ref>

In a related action in 1991, the [[Federal Trade Commission]] investigated OSF for allegedly using "unfair trade practices" in its "process for acquiring technology."<ref>{{cite news

|newspaper=Digital News ("The Newspaper for VAX System Management")

|date=February 4, 1991 |pages=1,6 |last=Heichler |first=Elizabeth

|title=OSF probed by feds; unfair trade alleged}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |publisher=[[Bloomberg L.P.|Bloomberg]]

|url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1991-05-12/are-open-softwares-standards-shutting-out-competitors

|title=Are Open Software's Standards Shutting Out Competitors?

|quote=The OSF, in fact, has confirmed that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating it

|date=May 12, 1991}}</ref>

[[File:OSF1 Release Letter.jpg|thumb|Open Software Foundation OSF/1 Release Letter December 7, 1990]]OSF's Unix reference implementation was named ''[[OSF/1]]''. It was first released in December 1990<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://tech-insider.org/unix/research/1990/1023-a.html |title=Open Software Foundation releases OSF/1 operating system, offering customers powerful function, industry standards |website=tech-insider.org |access-date=2018-12-04}}</ref> and adopted by Digital a month later.<ref>{{cite press release

|title=Digital Delivers on the Open Advantage Promise of OSF/1 and DCE

|publisher=Digital Equipment Corporation

|date=January 22, 1992

|url=http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.esl-l/msg/b099f187095ca972

|access-date=2007-07-18

}}</ref> As part of the founding of the organization, the [[AIX]] operating system was provided by IBM and was intended to be passed-through to the member companies of OSF. However, delays and portability concerns caused the OSF staff to cancel the original plan. Instead, a new Unix reference operating system using components from across the industry would be released on a wide range of platforms to demonstrate its [[Porting|portability]] and vendor neutrality. This new OS was produced in a little more than one year. It incorporated technology from [[Carnegie Mellon University]]: the [[Mach (kernel)|Mach]] 2.5 [[microkernel]]; from IBM, the journaled [[file system]] and commands and [[Library (computing)|libraries]]; from SecureWare secure core components; from [[Berkeley Software Distribution]] (BSD) the [[computer network]]ing stack; and a new [[virtual memory]] management system invented at OSF. By the time OSF stopped development of OSF/1 in 1996, the only major Unix system vendor using the complete OSF/1 package was Digital (DEC), which rebranded it Digital UNIX (later renamed [[Tru64 UNIX]] after Digital's acquisition by [[Compaq]]). However, other Unix vendors licensed the operating system to include various components of OSF/1 in their products. Other software vendors also licensed OSF/1 including Apple. Parts of OSF/1 were contained in so many versions of Unix thatitmay have been the most widely deployed Unix product ever produced.

Other technologies developed by OSF include [[Motif (software)|Motif]] and [[Distributed Computing Environment]] (DCE), respectively a [[widget toolkit]] and package of distributed network computing technologies. The Motif toolkit was adopted as a formal standard within the [[Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers]] (IEEE) as P1295 in 1994.<ref>{{cite web |last=Smeloff |first=Jane |title=OSF Flash – Motif an IEEE Standard |url=http://diswww.mit.edu/menelaus.mit.edu/osf-news/9 |publisher=Open Software Foundation |access-date=2 September 2013 |date=17 January 1994}}</ref>

|title=TET History

|url=http://tetworks.opengroup.org/Products/tet_history.htm

|date=July 12, 1996

|publisher=The OpenGroup

|access-date=2009-07-18

}}</ref> and the operating system OSF/1 MK from the OSF Research Institute based on the Mach3.0 microkernel. ODE and TET were made available as open source. TET was produced as a result of collaboration between OSF, UNIX International and the X/Open Consortium. All the OSF technologies had corresponding manuals and supporting publications produced almost exclusively by the staff at OSF and published by Prentice-Hall. IBM has published its version of ODEonGitHub.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://github.com/IBM/ode |title=OSF Open Development Environment as modified by IBM |last=Ward |first=Chris (tjcw) |website=GitHub |access-date=October 8, 2020}}</ref>

By 1993, it had become clear that the greater threat to UNIX system vendors was not each other as much as the increasing presence of [[Microsoft]] in enterprise computing. In May, the [[Common Open Software Environment]] (COSE) initiative was announced by the major players in the UNIX world from both the UI and OSF camps: Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun, [[Unix System Laboratories]], and the [[Santa Cruz Operation]]. As part of this agreement, Sun and AT&T became OSF sponsor members, OSF submitted Motif to the [[X/Open]] Consortium for certification and branding and [[Novell]] passed control and licensing of the UNIX trademark to the X/Open Consortium.

In March 1994, OSF announced its new organizational model and introduced the COSE technology model as its Pre-Structured Technology (PST) process, which marked the end of OSF as a significant software development company.<ref>{{cite press release

|publisher=AT&T Global Information Systems, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM Corporation, SunSoft Incorporated, et al.

|date=March 23, 1994 |url=http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.osf.misc/msg/4ebc895ff10823f1

|title=Leading Vendors Unify to Accelerate Open Systems

|access-date=2007-07-18

}}</ref> It also assumed responsibility for future work on the COSE initiative's [[Common Desktop Environment]] (CDE). In September 1995, the merger of OSF/Motif and CDE into a single project, CDE/Motif, was announced.<ref>{{cite press release

|publisher=Open Software Foundation

|date=September 7, 1995

|url=http://groups.google.com/group/cu.motif-talk/msg/9935c0cb91e254fd

|title=OSF Announces Formal Launch of CDE/Motif Project

|access-date=2007-07-18

{{Unix}}

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