IBM expands financial support of OSF; confirms commitment to ship OSF/1

Business Wire

April 9, 1990

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- IBM announced Monday that it has expanded its financial support to the Open Software Foundation.

In addition, IBM said it intends to ship future AIX offerings based on the OSF/1 operating system.

As indicated in OSF's recent press release, discussions on merging the industry's open software development efforts have now ended, as OSF, UNIX International and AT&T's UNIX Software Operation could not reach agreement on the OSF proposal for an independent, vendor-neutral organization to serve the needs of the industry.

``IBM became a founding sponsor of the Open Software Foundation because we share its commitment to provide the best technology our industry can offer through an open, vendor-neutral selection process,'' said Jack Kuehler, President of IBM. ``That process has already proven successful with OSF/Motif.

``We are now shipping OSF/Motif as part of our AIX PS/2 offering and have announced it for May availability on our new RISC System/6000 family,'' Kuehler continued. ``In addition, we look forward to OSF's announcement of its distributed computing offering in May as a further demonstration of the value of its open process to our industry.''

IBM has licensed the early release of OSF/1 and initial porting efforts are underway. The company intends to provide its first implementation of the OSF/1 operating system on its PS/2 platform in 1991. The company will confirm its plans in the third quarter of 1990.

``IBM's extended financial support will help ensure OSF's emerging role as the industry's principal supplier of leading edge, vendor-neutral, open standard software," said Kuehler. ``OSF/1 will be the open operating system for the 90's, and OSF will continue to drive technology forward while protecting the interests of end users and the industry.'' Trademarks: OSF, OSF/1, and OSF/Motif are trademarks of the Open Software Foundation. AIX and RISC System/6000 are trademarks of IBM Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of American Telephpone and Telegraph.

CONTACT: IBM, White Plains Doug DeLay, 914/642-5458