A Unix For The Masses?

Like many executives in the software business, Roel Pieper is a Bill Gates wannabe. But as president of Unix Systems Laboratories Inc., he may have a better shot at making it than most. His company, majority-owned by American Telephone & Telegraph Co., already collects nearly $100 million annually in royalties from computer makers that sell AT&T's Unix, the basic control program for almost all engineering workstations and, increasingly, for other computers. But, Pieper says, if a new Unix takes off, USL's market share will swell, revenue could hit $1 billion in five years, and USL's clout could approach that of Gates's Microsoft Corp. "I want to be in the same position," says Pieper (pronounced "peeper").

A Pieper pipe dream? Perhaps. But on June 16, Pieper, 36, takes the wraps off a strikingly different Unix. Code-named Destiny, this one is aimed at the mass market of desktop computers, not just the programmers and engineers who use workstations. And, unlike earlier versions of Unix, Destiny's fate as a standard is much better. It has built-in, easy-to-use graphics similar to those of Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh and Microsoft's Windows. That and dozens of other standard features reduce the need for computer makers to tinker with Unix. In the past, such tinkering made Unix on computer Brand A incompatible with Unix on Brand B. With one Unix there would soon be "shrink-wrapped" applications programs that could be transferred from one brand of computer to another, the way Lotus 1-2-3 can be shifted from one PC brand to another.