Merger
By 1993, it had become clear that the greater threat to UNIX system vendors was not each other as much as the increasing presence of Microsoft in enterprise computing. In May, the Common Open Software Environment (COSE) initiative was announced by the major players in the UNIX world from both the UI and OSF camps: Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun, Unix System Laboratories, and the Santa Cruz Operation. As part of this agreement, Sun and AT&T became OSF sponsor members, OSF submitted Motif to the X/Open Consortium for certification and branding and Novell passed control and licensing of the UNIX trademark to the X/Open Consortium.
In March 1994, OSF announced its new organizational model as well as introducing the COSE technology model as its Pre-Structured Technology (PST) process which marked the end of OSF as a significant software development company. It also assumed responsibility for future work on the COSE initiative's Common Desktop Environment (CDE). In September 1995, the merger of OSF/Motif and CDE into a single project, CDE/Motif, was announced.
In February 1996 OSF merged with X/Open to become The Open Group.
Despite the similarity in name and the fact that both groups were based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there was never any connection between OSF and the Free Software Foundation, neither is it associated with the technology non-profit Open Software Foundation based in Washington, DC or Open Systems, Inc.
Read more about this topic: Open Software Foundation