AT&T And Sun Microsystems Announce Project To Facilitate Convergence Of Unix System V With Sun's Operating System5

AT&T And Sun Microsystems Announce Project To Facilitate Convergence Of Unix System V With Sun's Operating System

AT&T And Sun Join Forces On Unix Operating System Standard

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 4, 1985 -- PRNewswire -- AT&T and Sun Microsystems today announced that they are working together to facilitate convergence of AT&T's UNIX System V with Sun's 4.2BSD-based operating system.

Currently, UNIX System V is the de facto industry standard for commercial users, while 4.2BSD is widely used in the academic and scientific communities. The converged system will continue to run the large and growing base of System V applications and will provide the advanced networking services that have previously only been available in 4.2BSD systems.

Roland Pampel, vice president of Software for AT&T's Computer System's division said, "Consolidating the technical community is an important step in establishing UNIX System V as the standard operating system for all computers from micros to mainframes. We welcome the assistance of Sun in driving the standard forward."

Bill Joy, vice president of research and development at Sun and principal designer of 4.2BSD, said, "This is a significant step toward unifying the UNIX System license community around a single standard. The joint AT&T and Sun effort will work on evolving the System V standard to accommodate the services offered by 4.2BSD."

Sun's first step in the joint effort will be to add complete compatibility with AT&T's System V Interface Definition to its operating system while maintaining all of the features and functionality of 4.2BSD and Sun's enhancements. Programs written for the current Sun Operating System Software, including those using Sun's Network File System (NFS), SunWindows, Sun's multi-window screen management package, and SunCore, Sun's graphics library, will continue to operate in future Sun releases. Full System V Interface Definition conformance is expected to be available from Sun by early 1986.

The two companies will meet regularly to discuss future directions of System V and the UNIX system marketplace.

Sun Microsystems Inc. of Mountain View designs, manufactures, and markets high-performance, general-purpose workstations for technical professionals.

UNIX is a trademark of AT&T.

/CONTACT: Jackie Rae or Lorrie Duval of Sun Microsystems, 415-960-7421, or Martin Nabut of AT&T Information Systems,

201-898-8147