Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Dennis Freeman (415) 336-6117
Hi-Tech PR
Claudia Carasso (415) 864-5600
Mt Xinu
Alan Tobey (415) 644-0146
MT XINU BECOMES MASTER DISTRIBUTOR OF ONC/NFS
FOR MACH OPERATING SYSTEM
WASHINGTON, D.C. January 23,1990 At the Uniforum trade show being held
here, Sun Microsystems and Mt Xinu today announced the signing of an
agreement under which Mt Xinu will become a master distributor of
Sun's Open Network Computing/Network File System (ONC/NFSTM)
networking standard for Carnegie Mellon University's Mach operating
system. ONC/NFS will become a standard component of all commercial
versions of Mach to be distributed and supported by Mt Xinu, a leading
developer of UNIX system software.
Mach is a multiprocessing operating system developed by Carnegie
Mellon with support from the Defense Advanced Resealch Projects
Administration (DARPA). Mach features an advanced, simplified kernel
design on which to build modem UNIX facilities. Mt Xinu is under
contract from CMU to develop and distribute the version called 2.6 MSD
("Mach Standard Distribution") for the Sun3, Digital VAX and IBM RT
PC workstations. Versions for other systems will follow.
Mt Xinu will integrate ONC/NFS with the Andrew File System (AFS)
and offer a complete source code release to system manufacturers and
software developers. The licenses Sun's ONC/NFS 2.6 MSD version will
provide a full 4.3BSD ("Berkeley UNIX") interface and will be
binary compatible with most 4.3BSD applications.
Mt Xinu becomes one of Sun's select NFS master distributors,
licensed to distribute source code to companies who, in turn, may
distribute binaries to their customers. Mt Xinu will distribute the
full ONC platform, including the RPC libraries and NFS.
C/NFS, part of Sun's SunNetTM family of networking products, is
the defacto standard for sharing computer files across disparate
computer systems. The technology has been licensed by more than 290
organizations and system vendors. In addition, ONC's Remote Procedure
Call (RPC) protocol is the basis of the Common Distributed Computing
Platform for the development of multivendor distributed computing
applications. Unveiled in September 1989, this common platform will
be supported by Sun, Novell and Netwise and endorsed by 3Com, Banyan,
Lotus, Oracle, Informix, Ingres, Sybase and other software developers.
"Now Mach software developers and users will have access to the
same standard distributed computing environment and network file
system already available for most major operating systems worldwide,"
said Bill Keating, Sun's director of technology marketing. "Software
developers who write to the RPC common platform will now be able to
run their distributed applications across Mach, UNIX System V.4,
SunOS, Digital's VMS and Ultrix, PCDOS (through PCNFS), Novell
Netware, IBM's MVS and VM for mainframes, and many other operating
systems."
"Adding ONC/NFS to Mach will greatly speed the acceptance of Mach
in the development community," said Mt Xinu Sales Vice President Dick
Wrenn. "NFS will help Mach fit into existing environments and will
provide the filesharing technology and distributed applications
platform that has been so useful for regular UNIX applications. Mt
Xinu was Sun's first NFS distributor (in 198S), so we've had over four
years to learn how to adapt NFS to new technologies as they emerge."
Berkeley, Calif. based Mt Xinu, founded in 1982, specializes
in the development, marketing and support of leadingedge UNIX system
software for research, development and educational applications.
Sun Microsystems, Inc., headquartered in Mountain View,
Calif., is a leading worldwide supplier of networkbased distributed
computing systems, including professional workstations, servers and
UNIX operating system and productivity software.
ONC/NFS, SunNet and Sun3 are trademarks of Sun Microsystems. UNIX
is a registered trademark of AT&T. All other products or services
mentioned in this document are identified by the trademarks or service
marks of their respective companies or organizations.
