Tech Report CS-93-59

Open Software: UNIX, DCE, and Competitors

Thomas W. Doeppner Jr.

December 1993

Abstract:

Open software is software contributing to a general goal of systems that do not depend on any one hard ware or software vendor and are easily extensible by adding new software built upon the functionality of existing software. We discuss some of the defining characteristics of open software and frameworks that ease its production. These frameworks include operating systems and software supporting distributed computing. Examples are UNIX, NT, and DCE. We also examine two technological developments that are becoming very important in the development and use of these frameworks. The first is a structuring technique for operating systems -- microkernels. The second is a technique for doing concurrent and parallel computation -- multithreaded programming.

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