Business
ActiveX group set Oct. 1 date
Microsoft has answered criticisms that it has been tardy in organising its promised independent consortium to steer ActiveX development, pencilling in a date for the first day of October.
In July, Microsoft said it would hand over the reigns to its ActiveX component technology to counter fears that it wouldn't provide a level playing field for object software development. The October 1 meeting, to be held in New York, will bring together more than 70 concerns embracing independent software and hardware developers. Microsoft has already said it will make Macintosh and Unix specifications available, to compete with the broad cross-platform compatibility of Netscape Navigator.
Netscape, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Macromedia are all planning to attend but Sun hasn't yet replied. Sun is, of course, developing the rival component technology, Java.