Talk:Open Software Foundation

Hamilton Group

I think it was named because the building Armando worked in was on Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto, California. Nothing to do with Hamilton Group which is a bunch of rocks. But to say so would need a source I suppose. W Nowicki (talk) 00:16, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Incorporation status

In the United States, people refer to 501(c)(3) incorporated companies/organizations, which are private charities or public foundations, as nonprofit organizations that allow income tax deductions for contributions to these organizations. There are numerous other incorporation types (including many other 501(c) types) which are not charities and thus do not qualify for contributions to be tax deductible. These are commonly referred to as "not-for-profit" organizations. The Open Software Foundation was organized as a not-for-profit under the National Cooperative Research and Production Act which was aimed at fostering collaboration without the threat of anti-trust action. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonom01 (talk • contribs) 16:02, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Founding of OSF

I just viewed your OSF document and it brought back a lot of memories. Fyi, OSF did not arise from any meeting on the west coast as you report. My name is Mike Gutman and at that time I was VP of engineering at Apollo Computer. OSF started with a phone call from me to Don McInnis, head of the VAX program at DEC. I knew Don from my ten years at DEC from 1974 to 1983. Apollo needed to do something to negate Sun’s control of ATT’s Unix. Don and I had lunch to see if DEC was interested in participating, and they were. We then contacted HP who also expressed interest. Tom Vanderslice was the Apollo CEO at that time and had a brother who was highly placed at IBM. His brother made inquiries for us at IBM and they expressed interest and a meeting was arranged in Armonk at which several of us gave a presentation to IBM CEO John Akers and several of his staff. IBM expressed immediate interest and asked to participate utilizing the work they already had in progress. A team was sent down to evaluate their work and the result was a go. A team of Apollo, DEC, HP and IBM was quietly assembled at one of Apollo’s buildings and worked together for three months to create OSF. As announcement time drew near contacts were made with Bull, Nixdorf, Siemens, Hitachi and Fujitsu who all joined. All nine companies provided financial support for OSF. I have the photos and media coverage if you would like to view them. ~2026-37671-32 (talk) 15:47, 1 July 2026 (UTC)