©1987 - Richard A. Bilancia - All Rights Reserved
to be published first in the June 1987 issue of UNIX®/World
Yes, in recent weeks many have announced the demise and death of the king of UNIX® variants, XENIX® from Microsoft (Redmond, Washington). But, is that true? With somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 (according to different industry estimates) UNIX® licenses of all different flavors in place and over 200,000 of those licenses in the form of XENIX® (according to Microsoft), the king may be sleeping (possibly in preparation for battle) but certainly is not dead.
Primarily because of the several significant recent announcements about XENIX® and its future derivatives, my column this month will focus on these announcements, industry reactions, and the possible implications for the small UNIX® based multiuser system marketplace.
A little background.
In the bottom left hand corner of page seven of
the Friday February 20th Wall Street Journal there
appeared a small three inch inset that described the previous
day's announcement of the new AT&T / Microsoft joint project.
In part the column read, "...they will jointly develop a
version of AT&T's Unix operating system for personal
computers in an attempt to end confusion among users and promote
the use of Unix. ...the joint version is being designed just for
computers based on Intel Corp.'s new 80386 chip. ... The enormous
installed base of machines that use other chips won't be able to
use the new AT&T-Microsoft operating system."
This announcement came upon the heels of a marketing agreement at Uniforum in January among Microsoft, the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO, Santa Cruz, California) and Interactive Systems, that all three firms were going to embrace the XENIX® implementation of the UNIX® operating system as the official and preferred version for the computers to be based upon the Intel 80386 microprocessor. My initial impression (and probably the first impressions of many others) after reading the Wall Street Journal article was that AT&T was adopting XENIX® as the official version of UNIX® System V Release 3 for the Intel 80386. That initial impression was not correct. According to Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, as later quoted in the February 23rd issue of Computer Systems News, "The new version of UNIX® for the 80386 will allow applications written in both XENIX® and UNIX® V.3 to run on the microprocessor. It will be compatible on a binary level with the two operating systems." In other words, this agreement should result in the best of both worlds in the 386 environment.
Interpretations from the press.
The Microsoft/AT&T joint agreement that was
announced was reported in the industry press in one of two
different ways: either with complete enthusiasm for the pact, or
because the detailed terms of the agreement were not disclosed
with speculation about the underlying reasons for the agreement.
Representatives from SCO were quoted as saying that, "...as
a result of the pact, the Intel-based UNIX® market would grow by
an order of magnitude," and generally believed that the deal
would help eliminate confusion between UNIX® and XENIX®.
A third party reaction.
Probably the most significant, yet contrary to
the press, interpretation of the announcement has come from
Charles (Chuck) Hickey, President of Microport Systems, Inc.
(Scotts Valley, California). In an attachment to the February 24,
1987 Microport press release announcing their UNIX® System V.3
port for 386-based personal computers, Chuck Hickey expressed his
evaluation of the agreement in a document entitled Analysis
of the AT&T/Microsoft UNIX® 386 Announcement. Chuck has
been involved porting generic UNIX® to Intel microprocessors for
several years before founding Microport, so he is well qualified
to comment on the above discussed recent announcements. Chuck was
obviously quite concerned about the press coverage of the
AT&T/Microsoft announcement because the opening sentence of
his analysis reads: "I am writing to you out of concern that
recent misleading headlines in the trade press have led people to
think the opposite of the truth." In a nutshell, Chuck goes
on to state:
(1) that AT&T is not adopting XENIX®, but Microsoft is finally adopting UNIX®;
(2) that Microsoft is "...surrendering a significant proprietary edge....";
(3) that XENIX® compatibility will now be an automatic feature of all versions of UNIX® V.3/386 regardless of the vendor from which it comes;
(4) that AT&T will allow other companies besides Microsoft to license the UNIX® trademark; and
(5) that Microsoft was "...so far behind [in the development of a UNIX® System 5 release 3 port] that they have no choice but to drop their own development and pick up the standard release.
A likely scenario.
I agree completely with Chuck Hickey's assessment
on February 24th that "Last week's announcement by Microsoft
and AT&T regarding UNIX® for the 386 sets the stage for
unprecedented growth in the UNIX® marketplace centered around
386 based personal computers. Both Microsoft and AT&T must be
applauded for this decision." However, I disagree with his
conclusion that, "The truth is that no one's business will
be hurt because of...[the] announcement."
Accordingly, the scenario that I foresee for the 386 UNIX® system marketplace has a slightly different conclusion primarily because it is not yet fully clear that the new version of UNIX® 386 that will be available in early 1988 will be able to execute binary code compiled on the earlier releases of UNIX® 386, such as those available from Microport. Also, will this new port of UNIX® System V release 3 retain binary code compatibility with 286 UNIX®? I'm not sure if anyone knows yet.
You've heard me write in other columns that computer hardware has always been sold with the promise of the future availability of software; whether that software be at the operating system level, the tools or language level, or the final application level. Recently, standard operating systems have minimized the delay in finally getting this software to the user, but the problem has basically remained the same: hardware is available before software.
Therefore in my opinion, the real significance of the AT&T/Microsoft announcement is that UNIX® System V Release 3 for the Intel 80386 will allow applications already developed (or to be developed in the next 12 months) on any version of XENIX® (for the 8088, 8086, 80186, 80286 or 80386) to run without recompilation on this new official port called UNIX® V.3/386. On the other hand, according to their February 24th press release, Microport's recently announced version of UNIX® V.3/386 will not have "XENIX® compatibility...[until] early 1988."
So therefore, if you are a software developer that is interested in beginning to develop a product for the official AT&T/Microsoft UNIX® System V.3/386 that will not be available until early 1988 you have a decision to make: should you develop you application on XENIX® V/286 today, and ensure binary code compatibility with next year's product; or should you develop your application on Microport's currently available version of UNIX® 286 and possibly have to recompile your application when the new version becomes available if you want to run that application on the new version of UNIX® SVr3/386 where ever you get it from?
In any event, by this time next year there will be a generic, binary code compatible version of the UNIX® system for all 386 based systems that should lead to a software explosion for multiuser personal computers. In the meantime, XENIX® is alive and well for the 80286 and other Intel processors and likely to remain that way for quite some time. If you are a software developer please send me your comments about these and related issues. If I get sufficient response I'll include some of your comments in a future column.
DOS under UNIX® 386.
One last note for those interested in running DOS
underneath UNIX® on 386 systems. There are two different
products that implement DOS as a process on UNIX® and XENIX®
for the 386 chip: VP/ix, developed jointly by Phoenix
Technologies (Norwood, Mass.) and Interactive Systems
Corporation, as well as Merge/386 from Locus Corporation. VP/ix
has the support of Microsoft, SCO and Interactive while Merge/286
is currently being marketed by AT&T for their 6300 Plus. As
of this writing AT&T has made no decision as to which of
these products will be officially embraced for the 386 port of
UNIX®.