Open Software Foundation

The Open Software Foundation (OSF) was a not-for-profit organization founded in 1988 under the U.S. National Cooperative Research Act of 1984 to create an open standard for an implementation of the UNIX operating system.

In February 1996 Open Software Foundation merged with X/Open to become The Open Group.

The organization was first proposed by Armando Stettner of Digital Equipment Corporation at a by-invitation-only meeting hosted by DEC for several UNIX system vendors in January 1988 (called the "Hamilton Group", since the meeting was held at DEC's offices on Palo Alto's Hamilton Avenue). It was intended as an organization for joint development, mostly in response to a perceived threat of "merged UNIX system" efforts by AT&T Corporation and Sun Microsystems. After discussion during the meeting, the proposal was tabled so that members of the Hamilton Group could broach the idea of a joint development effort with Sun and AT&T. In the meantime, Stettner was asked to write an organization charter. That charter was formerly presented to Apollo, HP, IBM and others after Sun and AT&T rejected the overture by the Hamilton Group members.

The foundation's original sponsoring members were Apollo Computer, Groupe Bull, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nixdorf Computer, and Siemens AG, sometimes called the "Gang of Seven". Later sponsor members included Philips and Hitachi with the broader general membership growing to more than a hundred companies.

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