4 ms·

You what? I worked on a competitor to CDE. We existed first and were actually compact and fast. When CDE was announced it put a serious dent in our business,

You what? I worked on a competitor to CDE. We existed first and were actually compact and fast. When CDE was announced it put a serious dent in our business, but then was vapourware for quite a while so our sales returned. And once available was bloated, ugly and slow. We also had a side business in the graphical toolkit CDE used (Motif). Basically we took the Motif from OSF, fixed bugs and made a whole host of similar improvements and then sold and supported the result. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IXI_Limited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IXI_Limited

Zenst 14y ago
Sorry to hear CDE hits a nerve with you. Vaugly recall your product from my days at DHL and when we looked at UNIX on the desktop with SCO, but SCO etc priced themselfs out of the market on that one on comparision to windows. So what happened to your GUI today? As for Motif, well OSF is the Open Source Foundation right and if so selling open source, can see how that business model worked out. IIRC your GUI was mostly desktop/PC based and in that CDE wasn't a competitor so i'm somewhat confused, but I belive you.
- bijupunalor 14y ago
  Open Software Foundation (or "Oppose Sun forever"), they were never about "open source" but was a corporate group originally formed to fight AT&T/Sun and later Microsoft/WinNT. Despite millions of dollars investment in R&D and product development, they didn't produce anything of value. They also failed miserably in competing against Windows-NT. Except BSD, none of "traditional UNIX" had much to do with open-source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  While we were a division of SCO, SCO weren't that relevant to us. They bought IXI to ensure stability in supply of their desktop. SCO distinguished itself from other Unix vendors by having a friendly desktop including for administrators and their tools. IIRC our business was something like 3% of sales on Intel chips with the rest being RISC, although SCO itself isn't counted in that since we didn't sell on the platform (corporate took the software and customized it to their needs). SCO definitely considered Windows (NT) to be the competitor. However SCO was considerably cheaper than the RISC workstations and operating systems. The changing usage patterns are what led us into the browser space, into making Motif look like Windows so when displayed on Windows it wasn't jarring, and then our foray into letting you access any app via your browser which became Tarantella. OSF (you didn't get the expansion quite right) was a pawn in the Unix wars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars GUI issues in the Unix variants were the battleground in the early nineties, and finally petered out in the late nineties when Windows "won". Our (IXI, not the SCO corporate parent) major product of the time was X.desktop which only ran on Unix systems using the X window system. ie it was Unix based apps to make Unix easy to use. We then moved into "client access" which meant terminal emulators, X servers for Windows and file access (VisionFS) which were Windows based programs to make it easy to use Unix systems (except VisionFS). Finally we did Tarantella which made it easy to use apps from just a web browser, and it was irrelevant if the apps were Unix or Windows. Tarantella was eventually bought by Sun which was eventually bought by Oracle, but the product is still for sale. Some details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Secure_Global_Desktop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Secure_Global_Desktop (Disclosure: I was the architect for the non-gui protocol parts of Tarantella) VisionFS is what I am most proud of - details at http://www.rogerbinns.com/visionfs.html http://www.rogerbinns.com/visionfs.html

Zenst 14y ago

Sorry to hear CDE hits a nerve with you. Vaugly recall your product from my days at DHL and when we looked at UNIX on the desktop with SCO, but SCO etc priced themselfs out of the market on that one on comparision to windows. So what happened to your GUI today? As for Motif, well OSF is the Open Source Foundation right and if so selling open source, can see how that business model worked out. IIRC your GUI was mostly desktop/PC based and in that CDE wasn't a competitor so i'm somewhat confused, but I belive you.

bijupunalor 14y ago
Open Software Foundation (or "Oppose Sun forever"), they were never about "open source" but was a corporate group originally formed to fight AT&T/Sun and later Microsoft/WinNT. Despite millions of dollars investment in R&D and product development, they didn't produce anything of value. They also failed miserably in competing against Windows-NT. Except BSD, none of "traditional UNIX" had much to do with open-source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi
rogerbinns 14y ago
While we were a division of SCO, SCO weren't that relevant to us. They bought IXI to ensure stability in supply of their desktop. SCO distinguished itself from other Unix vendors by having a friendly desktop including for administrators and their tools. IIRC our business was something like 3% of sales on Intel chips with the rest being RISC, although SCO itself isn't counted in that since we didn't sell on the platform (corporate took the software and customized it to their needs). SCO definitely considered Windows (NT) to be the competitor. However SCO was considerably cheaper than the RISC workstations and operating systems. The changing usage patterns are what led us into the browser space, into making Motif look like Windows so when displayed on Windows it wasn't jarring, and then our foray into letting you access any app via your browser which became Tarantella. OSF (you didn't get the expansion quite right) was a pawn in the Unix wars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars GUI issues in the Unix variants were the battleground in the early nineties, and finally petered out in the late nineties when Windows "won". Our (IXI, not the SCO corporate parent) major product of the time was X.desktop which only ran on Unix systems using the X window system. ie it was Unix based apps to make Unix easy to use. We then moved into "client access" which meant terminal emulators, X servers for Windows and file access (VisionFS) which were Windows based programs to make it easy to use Unix systems (except VisionFS). Finally we did Tarantella which made it easy to use apps from just a web browser, and it was irrelevant if the apps were Unix or Windows. Tarantella was eventually bought by Sun which was eventually bought by Oracle, but the product is still for sale. Some details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Secure_Global_Desktop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Secure_Global_Desktop (Disclosure: I was the architect for the non-gui protocol parts of Tarantella) VisionFS is what I am most proud of - details at http://www.rogerbinns.com/visionfs.html http://www.rogerbinns.com/visionfs.html