The industry alliance that promises to unify the UNIX world released in September its first technical document Ð a set of standards that define a unified programmer's API across all versions of UNIX Ð that will potentially complicate NeXT's moves to follow industry standards.
"We are in favor of the UNIX community coming together and creating standard APIs," said Karen Logsdon, a NeXT spokeswoman. "As they are defined, we will work to make NEXTSTEP support those standards," she added.
The standard, developed by a team of engineers from such UNIX giants as Digital Equipment Corporation, HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Novell's UNIX Systems Group, is designed to let developers write a single version of application programs that can then be able to run on different hardware and software platforms by simply recompiling and relinking.
Versions of UNIX featuring the so-called Common OS API should appear in mid-1994, the vendors said. Adding the common API won't be a big job for most, since many aspects of the API are already standard features in most versions of the UNIX operating system, including sockets, System VÐbased signals, conformance to POSIX, and the X Window system.
Nevertheless, the reliance upon X Windows is likely to complicate matters for NeXT, which does not support the system under NEXTSTEP unless the end user purchases one of several third-party products. Furthermore, NeXT's absence from the standard-setting committees means that NeXT will not formally have access to upcoming developments in the standards until they are publicly announced.