Open Group casts shadow over Unix

The future of several technologies developed by the Open Group for the Unix operating system are in jeopardy, writes Graham Lea.

Open Group announced last week that it will lay off around a quarter of its staff ? mostly those based in the US ? and will step up the sale of technologies which it owns around the market; a process which started last year. Many observers believe the standards body is, in effect, shutting up shop.

Technologies whose future is uncertain include the X Window System and Motif graphical user interfaces, used in many technology platforms including Unix and the Common Desktop Environment.

There is speculation that Joseph de Feo, the former Barclays Bank IT director who heads the Open Group, wants the body to stop developing technologies and play a more political role in the industry.

De Feo said last year the Open Group was working towards producing standards to make the Internet governable and accessible to all.

This was incorporated in the group?s so-called Dialtone initiative. Some industry watchers, however, considered Dialtone to be unworkable.

The Open Group said that the object of Dialtone was ?to make IT infrastructure as trusted and easy to use as the telephone, adding that the strategy would ?produce a basic set of services that the Internet requires to function as a secure and reliable infrastructure?.