It was created in an attempt to establish a vendor-neutral, platform-independent, open standard of the 16-bit Windows API not controlled by Microsoft.
The various graphical Windows applications had already started to reduce training time and enhance productivity on personal computers.
The consortium, counting Sun, IBM, Hewlett Packard and Novell among its members,[3] proposed PWI to various companies and organizations including X/Open, IEEE and Unix International.
In September, now part of an ECMA delegation, they made an informational presentation about the project at the ISO SC22 plenary meeting in The Hague, Netherlands.
[8] In April 1995, Willows Software, Inc. (formerly Multiport, Inc.[9][10]) a Saratoga, California-based Canopy-funded company, that had been working on Windows to Unix technologies (inherited from then defunct Hunter Systems, Inc.[11]) since early 1993, joined the ad hoc ECMA group.