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35-413: The COSE process was established during a time when the " Unix wars " had become an impediment to the growth of Unix. Microsoft , already dominant on the corporate desktop, was beginning to make a bid for two Unix strongholds: technical workstations and the enterprise data center . In addition, Novell was seeing its NetWare installed base steadily eroding in favor of Microsoft-based networks; as part of

70-419: A fork of NetBSD, and DragonFly BSD as a fork from FreeBSD in 2003. Mac OS X v10.5 is the first operating system with open source BSD code to be certified as fully Unix compliant. BSD systems can claim direct ancestry from Version 7 Unix . According to Open Source advocate Eric Raymond , BSD systems can be considered "genetic Unix", if not "trademark Unix". During BSD's period of legal turmoil (1992–94),

105-451: A large sample of current Unix applications uncovered 1,170 such system and library calls. As might be expected, the actual number of interfaces cataloged continued to grow over time. Management of the specification was given to X/Open . In October 1993, it was announced that the UNIX trademark, which was at that time owned by Novell, would be transferred to X/Open. These developments meant that

140-524: A multi-faceted approach to battling Microsoft, they had turned to Unix as a weapon, having recently formed a Unix-related partnership with AT&T known as Univel . Unlike other Unix unification efforts that preceded it, COSE was notable in two ways: it was not formed in opposition to another set of Unix vendors, and it was more oriented toward making standards of existing technologies than creating new offerings from scratch. The initial members, (known as "The Big Six" or "SUUSHI"), were: These represented

175-468: A quarter and a third of operating system utilities could be made to crash by fuzzing ; the researchers attributed this, in part, to the "race for features, power, and performance" resulting from BSD–System V rivalry, which left developers little time to worry about reliability. The 1988 POSIX standard initially concentrated on system C library functions beyond what was included in the forthcoming C standard; later it expanded to specify other aspects of

210-623: A single operating system. Their approach was to instead survey and document the OS interfaces already in use by Unix software vendors of the time. This resulting list, originally known as "Spec 1170", evolved to become what is now known as the Single Unix Specification . Spec 1170 (no relation to the SPEC benchmarking organization) was named after the results of the first COSE effort to determine which Unix interfaces were actually in use; inspection of

245-403: A standalone product for use with Solaris until CDE was released in 1995. OpenWindows remained the primary Solaris desktop environment until 1997, when CDE became the primary desktop for Solaris 2.6. Even then, OpenWindows was still included with Solaris and could continue to be used instead of CDE. When Solaris 9 was released in 2002, development support for XView and OLIT-based applications

280-518: A standard GUI definition. One other concern of the time was legal exposure surrounding intellectual property : in March 1988, Apple filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming that Microsoft had copied the Macintosh look and feel. The OPEN LOOK specification was a collaboration between Sun and AT&T, who were then partnering in the development of SVR4. Xerox PARC was also credited for having not only done

315-411: A teaming of IBM , SCO , Sequent , and Intel which was followed by litigation ( SCO v. IBM ) between IBM and the new SCO, formerly Caldera . BSD worked to purge copyrighted AT&T code from their version between 1989 and 1994. During this time, various open-source BSD x86 derivatives took shape, starting with 386BSD , which was soon succeeded by FreeBSD and NetBSD . OpenBSD emerged in 1995 as

350-526: A unified system. (The feasibility of this had been demonstrated a few years earlier by the US Army Ballistic Research Laboratory 's System V environment for BSD Unix.) This was released in 1988 as System V Release 4 (SVR4) which still lives to this day through its derivative OpenIndiana . While this decision was applauded by customers and the trade press, certain other Unix licensees feared Sun would be unduly advantaged. They formed

385-679: The Common Open Software Environment (COSE) initiative. The unified desktop for this initiative became the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), and the look and feel chosen for it was based on Motif. Sun announced its plans to immediately offer Motif and start retiring OpenWindows, by then the predominant implementation of the OPEN LOOK look and feel. Sun began by offering the Motif developer toolkit and MWM window manager as

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420-467: The Open Software Foundation (OSF) in 1988. The same year, AT&T and another group of licensees responded by forming Unix International (UI). Technical issues soon took a back seat to vicious and public commercial competition between the two "open" versions of Unix, with X/Open holding the middle ground. A 1990 study of various Unix versions' reliability found that in each version, between

455-490: The Open Software Foundation (OSF), as a counter to their collaborative efforts. The OSF created the Motif GUI as its alternative to OPEN LOOK. OPEN LOOK is distinguished by its obround buttons, triangle glyphs to indicate pull-down and pull-right menus, and "pushpins" which allowed the user to make dialog boxes and palettes stay visible. The overall philosophy was to provide a clean, simple and uncluttered interface, so that

490-561: The X Window System and Sun's NeWS . Sun developed an X Window System distribution implementing the OPEN LOOK look and feel, calling it OpenWindows . Developers building OPEN LOOK applications could choose between two graphical programming libraries: the OPEN LOOK Intrinsics Toolkit ( OLIT ) or XView . The former was built on the Xt Intrinsics toolkit common to X; the latter used the same programming interface paradigm as

525-463: The COSE process the following June. COSE's announced areas of focus were: a common desktop environment; networking; graphics; multimedia; object-based technology; and, systems management. On September 1, 1993 it was also announced that the COSE vendors were developing a unified Unix specification with the support of over 75 companies. Unlike OSF or UI, the COSE initiative was not tasked to create or promote

560-480: The GUI libraries for Sun's earlier SunView window system, making it relatively easy for developers to migrate applications from SunView to X. There was also The NeWS Toolkit, or TNT, which as the name implies implemented OPEN LOOK for NeWS applications; support for NeWS applications was removed from OpenWindows in 1993. In 1990, Unix System Laboratories (USL) inherited OLIT from AT&T along with UNIX . Not long after,

595-540: The UNIX brand was no longer tied to one source code implementation; any company could now create an OS version compliant with the UNIX specification, which would then be eligible for the UNIX brand. Besides the opening and standardization of the UNIX brand, the most notable product of the COSE initiative was the Common Desktop Environment , or CDE. CDE was an X11 -based user environment jointly developed by HP, IBM, and Sun, with an interface and productivity tools based on OSF's Motif graphical widget toolkit . Although in

630-688: The Unix brand to X/Open. In 1996, X/Open and the new OSF merged to form the Open Group . COSE work such as the Single UNIX Specification , the current standard for branded Unix, is now the responsibility of the Open Group, which also controls the current POSIX standards. Since then, occasional bursts of Unix factionalism have broken out, such as the HP /SCO " 3DA " alliance in 1995, and Project Monterey in 1998,

665-432: The areas of desktop and the OS itself the COSE process was one of unification, in other announced areas, it was decided to endorse existing technologies from both camps rather than pick one. For example, the announced direction for networking was for all participants to sell, deliver and support OSF's DCE , UI's ONC+ , and a NetWare client. Other areas were addressed in very broad terms. For object-based technology, CORBA

700-482: The codebase for OLIT diverged as Sun and USL took its development in different directions. Sun continued to enhance its version to make its look and feel more consistent with XView. USL, in an attempt to create an API to make applications GUI independent, developed MoOLIT (from Motif OPEN LOOK Intrinsics Toolkit), which kept the OLIT API, but allowed users to choose which GUI they wanted at run time. The source to MoOLIT

735-460: The early history of Unix . Although AT&T's Bell Labs created Unix , by the 1980s, Berkeley's Computer Systems Research Group was the leading non-commercial Unix developer. In the mid-1980s, the three common versions of Unix were AT&T's System III , the basis of Microsoft 's Xenix and the IBM-endorsed PC/IX , among others; AT&T's System V , which it sought to establish as

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770-436: The merger of the new OSF and X/Open in 1996. In the end, the most significant product of the COSE process was the creation of a universally-recognized single UNIX standard and an independent organization to administer it. It marked the end of Sun's OPEN LOOK graphical environment in favor of a Motif -based desktop, at the same time making the latter a standard rather than a proprietary toolkit. Although it had less impact on

805-470: The nearly-complete GNU operating system was made operational by the inclusion of the Linux kernel and lumped together under the label " Linux ". GNU had been written from scratch to avoid copyright issues. Linux systems broadly aim for compatibility with POSIX . OPEN LOOK OPEN LOOK (sometimes referred to as Open Look ) is a graphical user interface (GUI) specification for UNIX workstations . It

840-494: The new Unix standard; and the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). All were derived from AT&T's Research Unix but had diverged considerably. Further, each vendor's version of Unix was different to some degree. For example, at a mid-1980s Usenix conference, many AT&T staff had buttons that read "System V: Consider it Standard" and a number of major vendors were promoting products based on System V. On

875-547: The other hand, System V did not yet have TCP/IP networking built-in, while BSD 4.2 did; vendors of engineering workstations were nearly all using BSD, and posters reading "4.2 > V" were available. Several vendors formed the X/Open standards group in 1984 to promote compatible open systems , and they chose to base their system on Unix. X/Open caught AT&T's attention. To increase the uniformity of Unix, AT&T and leading BSD Unix vendor Sun Microsystems started work in 1987 on

910-483: The other standardization areas it originally intended to address, it nonetheless had a major influence on the future of Unix extending far beyond the 12 months of its independent existence. Unix wars The Unix wars were struggles between vendors to set a standard for the Unix operating system in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Both AT&T Corporation and University of California, Berkeley are important in

945-465: The pioneering work in the industry for graphical user interfaces, but also for contributing to OPEN LOOK's "design, review, implementation, testing, and refinement". Involving Xerox, including licensing technology from them, was felt to serve as protection from any future legal entanglements. The specification was announced in April 1988. The following month, a group of competitors to AT&T and Sun formed

980-461: The same time, there was increasing use of GUIs in non-UNIX operating systems: the Apple Macintosh was released in early 1984, followed by Microsoft Windows 1.0 and Amiga Workbench in 1985. As AT&T contemplated its next major revision to Unix, which would eventually become SVR4 , it was believed by many that in order to remain competitive with other operating systems, Unix should have

1015-456: The significant Unix system and OS vendors of the time, as well as the holders of the Unix brand and AT&T-derived source code. They also represented almost all the key players in the two major Unix factions of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the OSF and Unix International (UI). Notable in its absence was OSF co-founder Digital Equipment Corporation ; Digital did finally announce its endorsement of

1050-577: The system environment. POSIX specified a "lowest common denominator" that could be met by both System V and BSD-based variants, as well as some non-Unix systems, with a reasonable amount of effort. In March 1993, the major participants in UI and OSF formed the Common Open Software Environment (COSE) alliance, effectively marking the end of the most significant era of the Unix wars. In June, AT&T sold its Unix assets to Novell , and in October Novell transferred

1085-490: The user's focus would be on the application rather than the interface. In fact, the original OPEN LOOK design was black and white only; a "three-dimensional" look and feel with shading was added later, in response to the 3-D style effects in Motif. It is a definition of a look and feel rather than a specific implementation, so it could actually be implemented with different programming toolkits or even on different underlying window systems; implementations were created for both

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1120-459: Was called out as the underlying technology, but method of implementation was left to the individual companies. In March 1994 UI and OSF announced their merger into a new organization, which retained the OSF name. The COSE initiative became the basis of the new OSF's "Pre-Structured Technology" (PST) process. These efforts in turn eventually became the responsibility of The Open Group , an entity formed by

1155-520: Was finally removed, as were the olwm window manager and the OPEN LOOK versions of the DeskSet productivity tools. Applications already developed using XView and OLIT can still be executed and displayed in both Solaris 9 and 10, but are no longer supported as native applications in Solaris 11. There are at least two projects continuing development of OPEN LOOK software: "OWAcomp" makes it possible to still use

1190-459: Was licensed by MJM Software, who ported it to several other Unix platforms. It was used for several years, almost exclusively by AT&T and Lucent Technologies , who wanted to give their existing OPEN LOOK applications a Motif look and feel. It was not widely used elsewhere. By June 1993, the major UNIX players, including AT&T and Sun, had decided that a truly unified Unix was necessary in order to better compete against Microsoft and had formed

1225-464: Was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T Corporation . OPEN LOOK was created at a time when there was little or no standardization in Unix graphical user interfaces (GUIs); the X Window System was emerging as the likely de facto standard for Unix graphical displays, but its designers had deliberately chosen not to specify any look and feel guidelines, leaving this up to application and window manager developers. At

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