The Open Software Foundation (OSF) was an organization founded in 1988 to create an open standard for an implementation of the Unix operating system. The organization was first proposed by Armando Stettner of Digital Equipment Corporation at a by-invitation-only meeting hosted by DEC for several UNIX vendors (called the Hamilton Group) to be an organization for joint development, mostly in response to the threat of the unilateral 'merged UNIX' efforts by AT&T and Sun Microsystems. The foundation's original members were Apollo Computers, Groupe Bull, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nixdorf Computer, and Siemens AG, sometimes called the "Gang of Seven". Later members included Philips and Hitachi. 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Open Standards are publicly available and implementable standards. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering company in the American computer industry. ... AT&T Inc. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... Apollo Computer, Inc. ... Groupe Bull (also known as Bull Computer or, informally, as Bull) is a French computer company based in Paris. ... Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering company in the American computer industry. ... The Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly known as HP, is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. ... now. ... Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme, AG (SNI) was formed in the mid 1990s by the merger of Nixdorf Computer AG and the Siemens Data Information Services (DIS) division. ... Siemens AG (FWB:SIE, NYSE: SI) is the worlds largest electronics company. ... Philips HQ in Amsterdam Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Royal Philips Electronics N.V.), usually known as Philips, (Euronext: PHIA, NYSE: PHG) is one of the largest electronics companies in the world. ... It has been suggested that Hitachi Works be merged into this article or section. ...

The founding of the organization was largely seen as a response to the collaboration between AT&T and Sun Microsystems 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." The competition between the opposing versions of Unix became known as the Unix wars. AT&T founded the UNIX International (UI) organization later that year as a counter-response to the OSF. AT&T Inc. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... It has been suggested that Traditional Unix be merged into this article or section. ... Scott McNealy holding Suns new UltraSPARC T1 processor, unveiled on November 14, 2005. ... The Unix wars were the struggles between vendors of the Unix computer operating system in the late 1980s and early 1990s to set the standard for Unix henceforth. ... Unix International or UI was an association created in 1988 to promote open standards, especially the Unix operating system. ...

OSF's standard Unix implementation was known as OSF/1 and was first released in 1990. For the most part, it was a failure; by the time OSF stopped development of OSF/1 in 1994, the only vendor using OSF/1 was Digital, which rebranded it Digital UNIX (later known as Tru64 UNIX after Digital's acquisition by Compaq). This article is about the year. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ... Tru64 UNIX is HPs (formerly Compaq; formerly DEC) 64-bit Unix operating system for the DEC Alpha AXP platform. ... Compaq was a personal computer company founded in 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto. ...

Other well-known technologies developed by OSF include Motif and DCE, respectively a widget toolkit and package of distributed network computing technologies. Motif (or capitalized MOTIF) is a graphical widget toolkit for building graphical user interfaces under the X Window System on UNIX and other POSIX-compliant systems. ... The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is a software system developed in the early 1990s by a consortium that included Apollo Computer (later part of Hewlett-Packard), IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, and others. ... In computer programming, widget toolkits (or GUI toolkits) are sets of basic building elements for graphical user interfaces. ...

By 1993, it had become clear that the greater threat to Unix vendors was not each other as much as the increasing presence of Microsoft in enterprise computing. In May, the 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 became an OSF member, and OSF submitted Motif to the X/Open Consortium for certification and branding. 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... The Common Open Software Environment or COSE was an initiative formed in March 1993 by the major Unix vendors of the time to create open, unified operating system (OS) standards. ... UNIX Systems Laboratories or USL was originally organized as part of Bell Labs in 1989. ... Tarantella, Inc. ... X/Open Company, Ltd. ...

In March 1994, OSF and UI merged into a new organization, retaining the OSF name and incorporating COSE's development model into its new Pre-Structured Technology (PST) process. 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. CDE on Unix (Solaris 8) DECwindows CDE on OpenVMS 7. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

In February 1996 the new OSF merged with X/Open to become The Open Group. 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... The current version of the article or section reads like an advertisement. ...

Despite the similarity in name and the fact that both groups were based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there was never any connection between OSF and the Free Software Foundation. Cambridge City Hall Settled: 1630 â€“ Incorporated: 1636 Zip Code(s): 02139 â€“ Area Code(s): 617 / 857 Official website: http://www. ... The Free Software Foundation logo The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ...

See also

• OSF/1 as implemented by DEC (1991-1994)

Tru64 is HPs (formerly Compaq; formerly DEC) 64-bit UNIX for the Alpha AXP platform. ...

References

• UI / OSF merger announcements
• Motif / CDE merger announcement