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In the mid-1980s, the two common versions of Unix were BSD, from the University of California at Berkeley, and System V, from AT&T. Both were derived from the earlier Version 7 Unix, but had diverged considerably. (This conflict was also known as the "UNIX wars" to some degree.) Further, each vendor's version of Unix was different to a greater or lesser degree.
A group of vendors formed the X/Open standards group in 1984, with the aim of forming compatible open systemOpen systems are computer systems that provide either interoperability, portability, or freedom from proprietary standards, depending on your perspective. For years the term was applied loosely to the many flavors of Unix. Since the emergence of The Opens. They chose to base their system on Unix.
X/Open caught AT&T's attention. To increase the uniformity of Unix, AT&T and leading BSD Unix vendor Sun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems is a Silicon Valley-based computer, semiconductor and software manufacturer. Sun's products include computer servers and workstations based on the SPARC processor, the SunOS and Solaris operating systems, the NFS network file system, the started work in 19871987 is a common year starting on Thursday. Events January January 1 Nunavut's capital changes it name to Iqaluit from Frobisher Bay. January 3 Aretha Franklin becomes the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. January 4 An Amtrak train on a unified system. This was eventually released as System V Release 4 (SVR4).
While this decision was applauded by customers and the trade press, other Unix licensees feared Sun would be unduly advantaged. They formed the Open Software FoundationThe Open Software Foundation was formerly an independent unit of what is nowadays joined with the X/Open Company as The Open Group. X Window System. (OSF), who released OSF/1OSF/1 is a variant of the Unix operating system developed by the Open Software Foundation during the late 1980s and early 1990s. OSF/1 was one of the first operating systems to use the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University, and is probably b, more closely based on BSD. AT&T and another group of licensees then formed UNIX International . Technical issues soon took a back seat to vicious and public commercial competition between the two competing "open" versions of Unix, with X/Open holding the middle ground.
In 19931993 is a common year starting on Friday and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003 Events January January 1 Czechoslovakia divides. Establishment of independent Slovakia and Czech Republic., AT&T sold Unix to Novell, who assigned trademark rights to X/Open. In 19961996 was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar), and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty''. Events January January 5 Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone Jan, X/Open and the OSF merged to form the Open Group, whose Single UNIX Specification is now the single standard for proprietary Unix. However, the damage to Unix's market share had been done.