Splinter Unix?

[Lawrence V. Cipriani]

Original poster names munged ...
> >e) now that Olsen has died at AT&T, ...
> 
> Because AT&T doesn't want to sell those rights to anyone, but rather, 
> protect its investment in offering the only platforms which will be UNIX 
> on day one of release, namely their own products and those developed by 
> their soon-to-be-subsidiary, Sun Microsystems.

What does Olsens death have to do with this?

>From "The Wall Street Journal", pg 8 col. 4 - (reprinted w/o permission)

"AT&T Suggests It May Spin Off Effort On Unix System to Allay Industry Fears"

"American Telephone and Telegraph Co. might some day spin off development and
licensing efforts of its Unix computer operating system to assuage industry
concerns that they give AT&T advantages in developing Unix computers.

"Such a spinoff isn't a possibility now, said Robert Kavner, president of
AT&T's Data Systems Group, but "at some point in the future we could put
ownership (of Unix efforts) in other people's hands."

The remainder of the article talks about OSF and AT&Ts efforts in the
computing business.  Other comments from Kavner about UNIX were included.

I was very suprised when I read this, I'll be even more suprised if it
happens.  I don't agree that this is best for AT&T, but it will definitely
help the UNIX industry overall.  Please read the whole WSJ article, if you
can, before commenting.

-- 
Larry Cipriani, AT&T Network Systems and Ohio State University
Domain: lvc at tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Path: ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!lvc (weird but right)