In 1988, two major competing UNIX groups emerged: the OSF (Open Software Foundation) and UI (UNIX International). OSF was lead by IBM, DEC, and HP, whereas UI was lead by AT& and Sun Microsystems.
The OSF was first formed to counter AT&'s alliance with Sun Microsystems to license and enhance the UNIX Operating system. OSF wanted to write their own version of UNIX, based on IBM's AIX.
UNIX International was formed shortly after to promote AT&'s System V UNIX system. The ``special" alliance between AT& and Sun Microsystems was reduced to partnerships between all UI members.
Since that summer of 1988, many things have happened, and as of January 1990, UI and its members were applauding the release of UNIX System V release 4 (SVR4, or V.4), which combines SVR3, BSD, XENIX, and SunOS. Meanwhile, OSF was planning for a first release of their operating system, (now based on MACH from Carnegie Mellon University) by the end of 1990.
In January 1990, AT&'s company that writes and licences System V is now for sale (for more than US$450 Million), Motif (the Graphics User Interface from OSF) may replace UI's OPEN LOOK, and OSF may even drop the development of a new version of UNIX and adopt SVR4.
In July 1990, AT& has changed the name of the USO (Unix Software Operation) to USL (Unix Software Laboratories Inc). This is thought to be the first step in distancing itself from AT&.
Early in 1993, Sun was shipping Solaris 2.1, completely based on SVR4. Silicon Graphics' new upcoming release (IRIX 5.0) is SVR4 as well.
IBM and HP seem to have backed away from an OSF-compliant operating system. It seems DEC has yet to make up its mind whether it will ship an OSF-compliant OS or ULTRIX on its newly released ALPHA-based systems.
AT& has been shipping SVR4 on its UNIX systems, and is releasing Destiny, a SVR4.2 version to run on PC-class machines. By the end of the first quarter, Sun will ship Solaris 2.1 for PC's.
In January 1993, Novell purchases USL thus taking control of UNIX. In September 1993, Novell re-organised and formed the UNIX Systems Group (USG), which takes control of UNIX.
Then, to counteract Windows NT from Microsoft and OS 2 from IBM, the main UNIX verndors decided to form COSE - the Common Open Software Environment. The COSE group will use Motic as its primary user interface. This ends the Motif - Open-Look interface war.