Affiliate News - Michigan Affiliate Discusses Future of UNIX

The future of UNIX was up for discussion at a recent meeting of the michigan!/usr/group, the UniForum affiliate in the Detroit area. "We had a number who felt that [Novell] UnixWare was the way to go and would be a survivor," reports Dick Williams, group treasurer. "The consensus was that SCO was in for the long run, that BSDI [Berkeley UNIX] was no longer an issue, and that UNIX would continue to grow in the marketplace."

The 60 members of the group are primarily UNIX providers and business users, developers, resellers, consultants, and software vendors. The most popular of the monthly dinner meetings-held at the Leather Bottle restaurant-have been the most recent one on using Mosaic to access the World-Wide Web, a presentation on Linux by Dan Irvin of Linux System Laboratories, and one on TCP/IP connectivity held in October. The connectivity meeting featured a hands-on demonstration with nine connected machines running several versions of UNIX, Windows NT, and DOS. A future meeting is planned on how to pick an Internet provider, when several providers from the Detroit area will be invited to give a short presentation on their services. Giveaways of software on CD have been helpful in attracting people to the meetings, board members report.

"The big draw of the user group is the chance to get together and talk and discuss problems with UNIX," Williams reports. "I don't recall a single question about Windows NT."

Other board members include John Lodden, president; Ryan Colcernian, presentations; Bill Allie, communication; Jim Glutting, meeting location; and Jim McQuillan, membership.

Anyone interested in more information on the group may address e-mail to info@mug.org or call Williams at (313) 265-9241.