The Open Group Continues to Expand Product and Services Portfolio

Leading Open Systems Consortium Absorbs X Window System Technology

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusettes (July 1, 1996) - The Open Group announced today as an addition to its growing portfolio of products and services, it will assume custodianship for the X Window System technology, currently owned and managed by the X Consortium. In its press release today, the X Consortium also declared that it will continue to fulfill its obligations as prime contractor in The Open Group CDE Pre- Structured Technology (PST) project, developing the next releases of CDE and Motif, scheduled to be completed by year end, and then cease its internal engineering operations.

"Since its first commercial release in 1986, the X Window System has matured to the point where a full-scale, dedicated consortium is no longer essential to the on-going support of the technology," said Robert W. Scheifler,X Consortium president and founder. "In light of our existing relationship it makes sense to fold our ongoing work into The Open Group. Furthermore, given the overlapping membership of the two organizations, this move will greatly streamline and enhance the process of defining open standards."

Formed in February 1996 by the merger of X/Open and Open Software Foundation, The Open Group was created to provide a more powerful organization to strengthen and streamline the development process and availability of open systems. The Open Group provides a focal point for the development of standard international specifications and test suites, standards-based technologies, advanced open-systems research, professional services and the management of an internationally recognized brand for open systems.

"Our mission is to make multi-vendor open systems the customers' choice for the delivery of the right information, to the right person, at the right time," said Jim Bell, CEO of The Open Group. "We are able to do this by offering a comprehensive portfolio of open-systems tools and services. Today's announcement takes The Open Group another step closer towards uniting the open systems industry."

X Consortium

The X Consortium is the successor to the MIT X Consortium and developed the X Window System, an important standard for computing interoperability.

The Open Group

Dedicated to the advancement of multi-vendor information systems, The Open Group is an international consortium of systems and software vendors and customers from industry, government, and academia. Under the umbrella of The Open Group, Open Software Foundation, Inc. (OSF) and X/Open Company Ltd. (X/Open) work together to deliver technology innovations and wide-scale adoption of open-systems specifications. OSF hosts industry-wide, collaborative software research and development for the distributed computing environment. X/Open Company's brand mark is recognized worldwide as a guarantee of compliance to open-systems specifications. The Open Group is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with European headquarters in Reading, England and offices in Menlo Park, CA; Washington, D.C.; Brussels, Belgium; Grenoble, France and Tokyo, Japan.

Open Software Foundation, OSF, the OSF logo, OSF/1, OSF/Motif and Motif are registered trademarks of Open Software Foundation, Inc. X/Open is a registered trademark and the "X" device is a trademark of X/Open Company Ltd. The Open Group is a trademark of Open Software Foundation, Inc. and X/Open Company Ltd. UNIX is a registered trademark in the US and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Ltd. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.