McCracken Challenges UNIX Community

Stay free and innovate, he urges

By Peggy King

As its first keynote speaker, Ed McCracken, chairman and CEO of Silicon Graphics (SGI), issued a rallying cry to UniForum '95 on Tuesday, Mar. 14. He reminded the audience, which filled a Dallas Convention Center ballroom, that the UNIX industry is healthy and growing, in contrast to the beleaguered PC segment of the computing market. As evidence of this vitality in UNIX, McCracken noted that 1994 was a good year for his company and its workstation competitors, and that most UNIX-based application software companies and the relational database vendors had good years as well. "The market is growing at over 20 percent per year and accelerating," he said.

Despite the good news, McCracken paraphrased Mark Twain in noting that the UNIX industry is often subject to "greatly exaggerated reports of its demise." One such report appeared in The Wall Street Journal the day before his keynote address, and McCracken responded to it forcefully. This article by Christian Hill presented information about the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) initiative-which was announced at UniForum '93-as if it had just happened and also contained erroneous information about the rate at which major computer vendors are embracing Microsoft Windows NT. Using information attributed to industry analyst Rob Enderle of Dataquest in San Jose, CA, the article mentioned that SGI, Hewlett-Packard, and DEC are rapidly adopting Windows NT.

McCracken stated that HP has made no announcements of support for NT and thoroughly refuted the statement on his firm's behalf. "Silicon Graphics has not supported NT, is not supporting NT, and has no development efforts underway of any kind to support NT," he said. "We are a UNIX company. The only non-UNIX activities we have are for games and set-top boxes in the entertainment world that need a simpler real-time system."

According to McCracken, freedom to innovate is the greatest advantage that UNIX vendors enjoy over their counterparts in the PC industry dominated by Microsoft and Intel. After opening his talk by contrasting the depressing atmosphere of a PC industry event and the spirit of collaboration even among competitors in the UNIX community, McCracken compared UNIX to a chaotic yet open democracy and the PC community to a not-so-benevolent dictatorship. Members of the UNIX community have the freedom to take risks, differentiate their products, and add value for their customers, he said. "When our freedom is threatened, we (the vendor community) forget about our family squabbles and join together to fight back."

McCracken perceives a threat in the monopolistic intentions of Microsoft and believes that UNIX vendors should not weaken their collective strength. In a call for keeping the UniForum Conference for the UNIX community, he urged vendors to resist joining with Microsoft. "If ever there were a time not to capitulate or adopt a 'big tent' mentality that would ultimately fragment and weaken the UNIX community, it is now," he insisted.

The speech seemed to strike a positive chord, judging by its reception. The crowd applauded its pro-UNIX solidarity statements several times.