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I'm talking data de-duplication searching tools,

Son, are you kidding me?

multi-monitor window managers,

What?

downloading / p2p tools,

Excuse me?

media players,

You fail it

media encoders

Wrong

etc.

Are you even trying?


In unrelated news, slashdot doesn't let me post this reply as-is, because it consists of too short lines, on average. Wtf. Fooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I figured it might be, looks like you are right: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onli...
12.2 Utility Syntax Guidelines:

Guideline 10:
        The first -- argument that is not an option-argument should be accepted as a delimiter indicating the end of options. Any following arguments should be treated as operands, even if they begin with the '-' character.

Sorry, if that appears harsh - but sometimes it pays to read manuals and try and understand what you're doing and how the stuff works.

I don't exactly remember when I learnt it first - but I DID already know when I also got told about it during my CS BSc degree course (probably 1st or 2nd year - which would place it about 1998-2000).

If you need to code stuff "securely", you need to understand how stuff works -- I don't think of myself as a particularly apt security coder or hacker - I mainly specialise on internal systems integration, not so much web or other front-end stuff, so I have the luxury that I already know the data is "sane", before it gets to me - and I "only" need to figure out how to transform it and where to send it on to.

Here are a few pointers, where you might read about it:

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onli...
"Guideline 10:
The first -- argument that is not an option-argument should be accepted as a delimiter indicating the end of options. Any following arguments should be treated as operands, even if they begin with the '-' character."

Even wikipedia mentions it - even though not strictly a "developer" resource:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

"In Unix-like systems, the ASCII hyphen-minus is commonly used to specify options. The character is usually followed by one or more letters. Two hyphen-minus characters ( -- ) often indicate that the remaining arguments should not be treated as options, which is useful for example if a file name itself begins with a hyphen, or if further arguments are meant for an inner command. Double hyphen-minuses are also sometimes used to prefix "long options" where more descriptive option names are used. This is a common feature of GNU software. The getopt function and program, and the getopts command are usually used for parsing command-line options."

If that's too far to go - try "man getopt" on your linux machine:

"
The parameters getopt is called with can be divided into two parts:
options which modify the way getopt will parse (options and
-o|--options optstring in the SYNOPSIS), and the parameters which are
to be parsed (parameters in the SYNOPSIS). The second part will start
at the first non-option parameter that is not an option argument, or
after the first occurrence of `--'. If no `-o' or `--options' option
is found in the first part, the first parameter of the second part is
used as the short options string.
"

man rm - and even rm --help on linux show it:
"
To remove a file whose name starts with a '-', for example '-foo', use
one of these commands:

rm -- -foo
" ...though without explaining the "--" in general...

man chown doesn't mention it, but refers to the full documentation in texinfo and how to access it - that one says under "Common options"

"
`--'
Delimit the option list. Later arguments, if any, are treated as
operands even if they begin with `-'. For example, `sort -- -r'
reads from the file named `-r'.
"

The information is there - and in _lots_ of places - but it DOES requ

Due to their commanding smartphone marketshare, along with millions of devices with embedded Linux shipped every year, wouldn't Samsung be the largest UNIX vendor?

Oh? What's that? You weren't counting embedded Linux and I'm a pedantic #$(*#$&@!!!. Can't argue with that!

Mac OS X is Unix -- it's been certified as Unix by the group that holds the copyright to the term. Every version of OS X from 10.5 - 10.9 except for 10.7 has been certified unix.

http://www.opengroup.org/openb...

Linux is Unix like.

I was going to contradict you, because Apple didn't bother certifying 10.7 as UNIX and don't use UNIX in their marketing anymore so I assumed they'd given up, but it appears that both 10.8 and 10.9 on Intel Macs are UNIX. Interestingly, it appears that nothing is certified UNIX08 yet...

OS X is UNIX 03 certified by The Open Group and carries the UNIX brand.

Interix once claimed that they hoped to build a certified Unix. It doesn't appear that they ever did so:

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/catalog.htm

I don't see Interix listed as certified Unix 93, certified Unix base, certified Unix 98, or certified Unix 03. I do see OSX listed.

Have you ever used a mac? Your great spouting of cliches suggest you havenâ(TM)t.
OS X is UNIX(tm) - not UNIX-like, UNIX-wannabe, etc... UNIX. http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3602.htm/
When did the shielding of lower layers become contradictory to UNIX philosophy?
Why do you think it is called a shell?

Like their initial select() implementation, which decremented the remaining time in the timeval structure to account for elapsed time, having an API is not the same thing as having a conformant API.

The current SUS allows that ("Upon successful completion, the select() function may modify the object pointed to by the timeout argument."), and that dates back at least as far as SUSv2.

It's still a rude surprise to people used to the BSD-style behavior in most other UN*Xes, and writing code that only sets the timeout before entering a select loop, though (that one bit me ages ago).

Like their initial select() implementation, which decremented the remaining time in the timeval structure to account for elapsed time, having an API is not the same thing as having a conformant API.

The current SUS allows that ("Upon successful completion, the select() function may modify the object pointed to by the timeout argument."), and that dates back at least as far as SUSv2.

It's still a rude surprise to people used to the BSD-style behavior in most other UN*Xes, and writing code that only sets the timeout before entering a select loop, though (that one bit me ages ago).

Depends on how you define Unix. OSX/iOS are based on FreeBSD & NetBSD. If you're talking about official, formal Unix OS's, neither Linux, the *BSDs or OSX would count as none of them are entitled to use the Unix trademark; only Solaris, HP-UX and AIX are, that I can think of.

UNIX® is a registered trademark of The Open Group (ditto for Motif, and the X logo is also their trademark), who seem fairly certain that recent versions of Mac OS X are, in fact, certified as being UNIX, and entitled to use the trademark.

OS X meets v4 for command line tools, but only v2 for the C API.

Same for Solaris 11, same for AIX 6, same for HP-UX 11i V3. Does this indicate that those OSes have not adopted any of the subsequent API changes, or does it indicate that the Open Group haven't updated their conformance suites so that you can't test anything better than v4 for the command-line tools and v2 for the C API?

(And do "V4" and "V2" refer to Issues 4 and 2, respectively, of the SUS, or do they refer to something else?)

The *BSDs and Linux are light years ahead of OS X's C API.

What are some of the significant things present in the C APIs of Linux and the *BSDs that are not present in the C API of OS X, and which, if any, of them were introduced in issues of the SUS later than 2?

Apple in general appears to be giving up on Unix. They've deprecated much of the Unix API in iOS, including simple things like fork(), and have stated that they want to move all application developers, including desktop app developers, to the iOS API.

Where have they stated that (in a way indicating that "all" includes not only the folks writing Mac Applications(TM) but also the people doing UN*X apps that work on OS X)?

OS X meets v4 for command line tools, but only v2 for the C API.

Same for Solaris 11, same for AIX 6, same for HP-UX 11i V3. Does this indicate that those OSes have not adopted any of the subsequent API changes, or does it indicate that the Open Group haven't updated their conformance suites so that you can't test anything better than v4 for the command-line tools and v2 for the C API?

(And do "V4" and "V2" refer to Issues 4 and 2, respectively, of the SUS, or do they refer to something else?)

The *BSDs and Linux are light years ahead of OS X's C API.

What are some of the significant things present in the C APIs of Linux and the *BSDs that are not present in the C API of OS X, and which, if any, of them were introduced in issues of the SUS later than 2?

Apple in general appears to be giving up on Unix. They've deprecated much of the Unix API in iOS, including simple things like fork(), and have stated that they want to move all application developers, including desktop app developers, to the iOS API.

Where have they stated that (in a way indicating that "all" includes not only the folks writing Mac Applications(TM) but also the people doing UN*X apps that work on OS X)?

OS X meets v4 for command line tools, but only v2 for the C API.

Same for Solaris 11, same for AIX 6, same for HP-UX 11i V3. Does this indicate that those OSes have not adopted any of the subsequent API changes, or does it indicate that the Open Group haven't updated their conformance suites so that you can't test anything better than v4 for the command-line tools and v2 for the C API?

(And do "V4" and "V2" refer to Issues 4 and 2, respectively, of the SUS, or do they refer to something else?)

The *BSDs and Linux are light years ahead of OS X's C API.

What are some of the significant things present in the C APIs of Linux and the *BSDs that are not present in the C API of OS X, and which, if any, of them were introduced in issues of the SUS later than 2?

Apple in general appears to be giving up on Unix. They've deprecated much of the Unix API in iOS, including simple things like fork(), and have stated that they want to move all application developers, including desktop app developers, to the iOS API.

Where have they stated that (in a way indicating that "all" includes not only the folks writing Mac Applications(TM) but also the people doing UN*X apps that work on OS X)?

Depends on how you define Unix. OSX/iOS are based on FreeBSD & NetBSD. If you're talking about official, formal Unix OS's, neither Linux, the *BSDs or OSX would count as none of them are entitled to use the Unix trademark

Wrong.

To reuse an analogy from above, that's like claiming that all the quacking waterfowl that seem to like being fed bread in the park are not "certified Ducks(R)" because because the man from The Duck(R) Group(TM) has not been paid to come along and certifiy the ducks.

Well, in fact, legally speaking, they're not Duck(R) waterfowl. The point is that, given that they walk enough like a Duck(R) waterfowl, and quack enough like a Duck(R) waterfowl, people are willing to treat them the same way they treat Duck(R) waterfowl even though they cannot legally be called Duck(R) waterfowl. (I.e., people are willing to use Linux distributions as a substitute for Unix(R) systems because, legally speaking, even though they're not Unix(R) systems, they're enough like it that the differences aren't worth spending the extra money for a Unix(R) system.)

The other reason to not care is that the duck certificiation man is not, in fact, an ornithologist and would happily certify a goose as a Duck(R)(TM).

Well, yeah, I suspect most sites with Unix applications - oops, sorry, that's "applications for Unix(R) systems" :-) - are probably not going to port them to z/OS (the certification for which is for a standard that's almost 20 years old, BTW; are there any geese that have been certified as a recent version of a Duck(R)? The only recent Ducks(R) I see are all stuff that could reasonably be considered Real Unix), given that if their apps assume they're using ASCII, they're in for a rude surprise....

To reuse an analogy from above, that's like claiming that all the quacking waterfowl that seem to like being fed bread in the park are not "certified Ducks(R)" because because the man from The Duck(R) Group(TM) has not been paid to come along and certifiy the ducks.

Well, in fact, legally speaking, they're not Duck(R) waterfowl. The point is that, given that they walk enough like a Duck(R) waterfowl, and quack enough like a Duck(R) waterfowl, people are willing to treat them the same way they treat Duck(R) waterfowl even though they cannot legally be called Duck(R) waterfowl. (I.e., people are willing to use Linux distributions as a substitute for Unix(R) systems because, legally speaking, even though they're not Unix(R) systems, they're enough like it that the differences aren't worth spending the extra money for a Unix(R) system.)

The other reason to not care is that the duck certificiation man is not, in fact, an ornithologist and would happily certify a goose as a Duck(R)(TM).

Well, yeah, I suspect most sites with Unix applications - oops, sorry, that's "applications for Unix(R) systems" :-) - are probably not going to port them to z/OS (the certification for which is for a standard that's almost 20 years old, BTW; are there any geese that have been certified as a recent version of a Duck(R)? The only recent Ducks(R) I see are all stuff that could reasonably be considered Real Unix), given that if their apps assume they're using ASCII, they're in for a rude surprise....

But neither Oracle nor Sun used the name UNIX, either then

Well, actually, Sun's OS originally announced itself in the boot message as "Sun UNIX 4.2BSD Version {version number}", or something such as that, until AT&T got cranky; "SunOS" first appeared in the boot message in, as I remember, 4.0 (at which point it was also more "4.3BSD" than "4.2BSD").

nor now.

Define "used"/"uses". They don't use it in the OS's brand name, but they sure use it on, for example, the Solaris 11 overview page ("Brings the reliability, security and scalability of the #1 UNIX OS to the enterprise cloud"). Apple doesn't use "UNIX" in the name of their OS, either, but they used it in various advertising materials, e.g. "sends all other Unix boxes to /dev/null", and The Open Group told them they had to certify (Mac) OS X in order to use the trademark.

Back in the day when that trademark cost money

It still costs money:

Annual fees apply, which are referenced by the Trademark License Agreement:

• License fee for the TMLA to remain in place
• Product registration fees
• Program fees (royalties)

Separate fees apply for the test suites.

every vendor called it something other than UNIX - SunOS, Solaris, Iris, AIX, HP/UX, SCO OSE, Dynix, CLIX, et al. The only company I can recall calling it UNIX was Novell's UnixWare, but then Novell got USL from AT&T.

There was also Digital UNIX, which was the new name for DEC OSF/1 after it passed the test suite for SUS conformance. (It was later renamed Tru64 UNIX when there was no longer a "Digital Equipment Corporation".)

So it would cost Oracle nothing.

...as long as they stop calling Solaris "the #1 UNIX OS" (or anything else with "UNIX" in it).

If OS X is Unix, what do you call iOS. And if we take Linux as a kind of Unix, how about Android?

Or maybe the title should be written as "the steady decline of Unix Server License sale"

No. The title is right. You are just trying to generalize something that is specifically, and legally defined. You can argue that other systems even, DOS are similar to or like UNIX, but you can't say that they are UNIX.

Mac OS X, client and server are UNIX because they satisfy the Single UNIX Specification. They have to satisfy this specification because the Open Group said so. The Open Group owns the trademark for UNIX. The SUS is an extension of POSIX drafted by the Open Group. If you say you are a UNIX system, it means you satisfy the owner's requirements. If you don't, you are doing an illegal thing and the Open Group can take you to court if they chose to. This isn't evil. What is happening is people are trying to generalize UNIX into a broader definition. It is the trademark owner's responsibility to fight these attacks against their property. If they don't, the name falls back into general use.

Having standards are important. USB would be pretty terrible if companies made USB devices that worked similar to other USB devices. You may have to purchase a USB controller that worked for that device, which really gets away from what USB is all about. The same is true with UNIX. UNIX machines typically run enterprise type software. For instance, Oracle bought Sun; Oracle produces enterprise database software and Sun produces the OS they run on, Solaris SPARC. Eventually Solaris ran on x86, but that is getting offtopic. What's important, is these machines need to have high uptimes and allow different manufacturers to compete with each other to prevent a company from getting locked into one manufacturer of UNIX machines. In theory, you should be able to replace an IBM AIX with Sun Oracle Solaris or HP-UX.

See here for versions of UNIX that satisfy the 03 revision: http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/xy.htm

Perhaps the AC doesn't know, the Open Group, you know, keeper of the Unix specification, has a certification program. Apple participates, and has the certificates to prove it.

Mac OS X Version 10.8 Mountain Lion Certificate, from the people who own the Unix(TM) specification.

Huh.

Yes & No. There is a version of Motif called Open Motif, which adheres to the Open Group Public License, which is not open source, b'cos it has a restriction that it can only be used on OSs that have licenses that satisfy the OSI's 'Open Source' definition.

GPL guys should like, if not love, this license as it forces reciprocity - the software cannot be used on closed or proprietary systems. Unfortunately, it can't be used on shared source systems either.

Motif, however, is still not open sourced - it's still a very commercial license. Nothing wrong w/ that, except that all the current commercial Unixes - Solaris, HP/UX and AIX - all offer KDE and GNOME, in addition to CDE, so it's hard to see end users cough up the cash for Motif/CDE when they can get KDE for free, and customize it to look like CDE (at least, that was possible in KDE 3.5 and in Trinity, dunno whether KDE lost that capability when it went to 4)

AFAIK those tool names could potentially be trademark protected (potentially because there's zero chance they would be approved in real life), they cannot be copyrighted even in principle for a whole pile of reasons. Even if they could, interoperability would override that, the same way it does for APIs. ...but there's a simpler answer. POSIX specifies all those utilities and one of the few things SCO v the world did decide is that SCO don't own or control the POSIX standard. They're listed at http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/

You're correct that SCO never got the API argument ruled on because they didn't own UNIX. This time Boies found someone that does actually own rights to give standing, they got their argument heard this time. They lost. Pity they couldn't get it ruled on 1st time but we got the result eventually!

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

UNIX 03
Registered Products:
Apple Inc.: Mac OS X Version 10.8 Mountain Lion on Intel-based Macintosh computers

The nice thing about Unix (in my case Linux/BSD) is that they are just as much a workflow toolkit as they are an OS.

Yup, that's why I'm running a commercial Unix, with some lower-level components open-sourced, on my laptop.

Yes I do like Linux and Unix, and I think it is great for Servers and Embedded systems, where it does a few things and does it well. However for the desktop we need to do a lot of crazy things all the time. That is where Macs and Windows excels.

Yup, Unix boxes don't work very well as desktop machines; that's why you're better off running OS X rather than some Unix.

Yes I do like Linux and Unix, and I think it is great for Servers and Embedded systems, where it does a few things and does it well. However for the desktop we need to do a lot of crazy things all the time. That is where Macs and Windows excels.

Yup, Unix boxes don't work very well as desktop machines; that's why you're better off running OS X rather than some Unix.

Yes I do like Linux and Unix, and I think it is great for Servers and Embedded systems, where it does a few things and does it well. However for the desktop we need to do a lot of crazy things all the time. That is where Macs and Windows excels.

Yup, Unix boxes don't work very well as desktop machines; that's why you're better off running OS X rather than some Unix.

Don't know if this is comedy or troll or what, but OSX is Unix.

You sure about that? I thought they abandoned that. Also they never certified the BDSs. They were never Unix(tm) but were certainly unix.

Mountain Lion is a certified Unix: http://blog.opengroup.org/2012/07/25/apple-registers-mac-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-to-the-unix-03-standard/

And i would call it what it is, which is a certified UNIX system.

Money talks. You could get a "certified" sticker for probably just about any BSD or Linux distro if you had the dough to hand over to The Open Group. Fuck, Microsoft could probably take the NT kernel and give it full POSIX/SUS compliance and a UNIX-like userland and with their money obtain almost immediate certification and be allowed to officially call it "UNIX." I don't use "official" UNIX certification as any kind of proof whatsoever that something is UNIX or not. It really doesn't mean jack shit. The Open Group owns the name "UNIX" and they therefore have the right to say what everyone else can say is "UNIX." One profit-based controlling group decides.

So you're saying that because they've put a user-friendly face on UNIX - whilst not taking away anything - that somehow makes it not UNIX anymore? That's just an elitist attitude.

Apple took away the standard UNIX windowing system by default, requiring the user to install it themselves if they want anything even remotely resembling a UNIX GUI. Of course, once again, this doesn't matter to the vast majority of Apple's audience--they don't know what the hell UNIX is, and probably never even heard of it.

Is this bad? Not necessarily; Apple fans buy their machines because they want a Mac and the MacOS interface that comes with it. Its interface might even have some advantages (especially those Mac users who it was designed for in the first place). But it's not a very UNIX-like system without some additional work (unless you primarily use the terminal). Under the hood it may be UNIX, but that's not my point. My point is, Mac OS X was designed with Mac users in mind above all else, not UNIX users. The UNIX certification is just a secondary selling point; just another bullet point to add to the "features" list to get more users (primarily corporate and geek types) that they otherwise may not have had the chance to sucker into buying it.

I would call it an Apple/Mac environment.

And i would call it what it is, which is a certified UNIX system.

The only notable UNIX aspect that a normal user can see is the shell, and that's pushing it because the entire system is designed so that the typical Mac user never will likely never even see (or use) it.

So you're saying that because they've put a user-friendly face on UNIX - whilst not taking away anything - that somehow makes it not UNIX anymore? That's just an elitist attitude.

Actually, the only notable UNIX aspect is that Mac OS X is a real certified UNIX.

No one argues that "goto" is a looping command; they're arguing that the program contains a loop implemented with a goto.

If we're going to split hairs like that, how about also noting that printf isn't a builtin with the POSIX shell (http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/idx/sbi.html), so that's not truly a shell program. http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/xcu_chap02.html for the full reference.

Close, it was certified Unix 03 in Leopard 10.5, which was the previous release.... Opengroup

OS-X did not become certified as Unix until 2003. If you notice, you will notice that there is nothing from Apple that was registered either under Unix 98 nor Unix 95 nor Unix 93. So not only was OS-X not certified as Unix before Snow Leopard, but even NEXTSTEP was never certified as Unix (or else one would have seen it under Unix 93 or 95)

True. But I have a metal license plate that is UNIX, too. The Open Group sells it because they are the owner of the UNIX trademark and they decide what can be called UNIX.

And OS X isn't Unix. Darwin is UNIX, and OS X is a GUI layer that runs on top of it. Like Windows used to run on top of MS-DOS back in the day.

iOS is derived from OS X, with which it shares the Darwin foundation, and is therefore a Unix operating system.

Rubbish. The Open Group owns the UNIX trademark, and they set the rules.

I want to certify a product which is based on a model previously certified by The Open Group. Is the procedure the same even though the software hasn't changed? Does certification cover the same product recompiled for different processor architectures?

The Open Brand policy allows for an existing certified product to be renamed without the need for further certification or testing. You will be required to provide a written statement to the CA indicating that there have been no material changes to the certified product. If there are changes then it depends on the nature of the changes, please refer to the TMLA.

The same product on a different processor architecture, even if built from the same source constitutes a new product with respect to the certification requirements, and is subject to a full test and certification. The act of recompilation is a material change and requires demonstration of conformance.

So the notion that "Y is derived from X ... and is therefore a Unix operating system" is just incredibly wrong. If iOS is UNIX, it's because Apple passed thr tests and paid the fees, not because of any relation to any other product's certification.

Second, iOS is not on the list, so it's also not UNIX in any way. It's not obvious whether this is because it doesn't actually meet requirements, or because Apple doesn't want to pay, but it doesn't matter. iOS is not UNIX, and you're a dumb cunt for trusting a wikipedia article any fanboy can edit when you could just as easily have gone to the official source.

iOS is derived from OS X, with which it shares the Darwin foundation, and is therefore a Unix operating system.

Rubbish. The Open Group owns the UNIX trademark, and they set the rules.

I want to certify a product which is based on a model previously certified by The Open Group. Is the procedure the same even though the software hasn't changed? Does certification cover the same product recompiled for different processor architectures?

The Open Brand policy allows for an existing certified product to be renamed without the need for further certification or testing. You will be required to provide a written statement to the CA indicating that there have been no material changes to the certified product. If there are changes then it depends on the nature of the changes, please refer to the TMLA.

The same product on a different processor architecture, even if built from the same source constitutes a new product with respect to the certification requirements, and is subject to a full test and certification. The act of recompilation is a material change and requires demonstration of conformance.

So the notion that "Y is derived from X ... and is therefore a Unix operating system" is just incredibly wrong. If iOS is UNIX, it's because Apple passed thr tests and paid the fees, not because of any relation to any other product's certification.

Second, iOS is not on the list, so it's also not UNIX in any way. It's not obvious whether this is because it doesn't actually meet requirements, or because Apple doesn't want to pay, but it doesn't matter. iOS is not UNIX, and you're a dumb cunt for trusting a wikipedia article any fanboy can edit when you could just as easily have gone to the official source.

"It also happens to be a bit of a clunker compared to many other modern *nix based OS's"............... Um, you do know that OSX is certified UNIX dont you?

Actually, OS X is Unix. One might say that the Darwin (OS X) kernel is a descendant of BSD, since Unix services are implemented in kernel using BSD (derived) code. On the other hand, the kernel is based on Mach 3 which was historically run as a microkernel, but is now packed so full of high level Unix code that it is anything but "micro".

Of course, OS X implements other capabilities (I/O Kit, Cooa, etc) in addition to those in the Unix spec./p

Linux is a unix workalike. OS X IS UNIX (to head off the nitpickers, the latest versions aren't certified).

Actually, the latest version is certified; Lion wasn't, but Snow Leopard was (and Leopard was, but maybe the certifications time out and disappear from unix.org after a while).

So there's POSIX, most of the command line user environment, etc.

Actually, much of "the command line user environment" is part of present-day POSIX, i.e. the Single UNIX Specification, and 1003.2 dates back to 1992, so it's been a part of POSIX for about 20 years now.

In any case, what Xenious may have meant by "you had all the functionality of the Linux OS" is "you had an OS that was another member of the UN*X family".

Linux is a unix workalike. OS X IS UNIX (to head off the nitpickers, the latest versions aren't certified).

Actually, the latest version is certified; Lion wasn't, but Snow Leopard was (and Leopard was, but maybe the certifications time out and disappear from unix.org after a while).

So there's POSIX, most of the command line user environment, etc.

Actually, much of "the command line user environment" is part of present-day POSIX, i.e. the Single UNIX Specification, and 1003.2 dates back to 1992, so it's been a part of POSIX for about 20 years now.

In any case, what Xenious may have meant by "you had all the functionality of the Linux OS" is "you had an OS that was another member of the UN*X family".

They are slow, that's why. Look for the announcement here when it comes: http://blog.opengroup.org/

While many of the components of OS X come from BSD it is indeed certified as UNIX per the UNIX 03 standard.... unlike Ubuntu.

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3555.htm

What we should have is what I've described above, time-zero and a counter. And translations from that to localized date time should be handled by a library.

Which, sadly, POSIX doesn't let you have as "UNIX time":

4.15 Seconds Since the Epoch

A value that approximates the number of seconds that have elapsed since the Epoch. A Coordinated Universal Time name (specified in terms of seconds ( tm_sec ), minutes ( tm_min ), hours ( tm_hour ), days since January 1 of the year ( tm_yday ), and calendar year minus 1900 ( tm_year )) is related to a time represented as seconds since the Epoch, according to the expression below.

If the year is <1970 or the value is negative, the relationship is undefined. If the year is >=1970 and the value is non-negative, the value is related to a Coordinated Universal Time name according to the C-language expression, where tm_sec , tm_min , tm_hour , tm_yday , and tm_year are all integer types:

tm_sec + tm_min*60 + tm_hour*3600 + tm_yday*86400 + (tm_year-70)*31536000 + ((tm_year-69)/4)*86400 - (tm_year-1)/100)*86400 + ((tm_year+299)/400)*86400

The relationship between the actual time of day and the current value for seconds since the Epoch is unspecified.

How any changes to the value of seconds since the Epoch are made to align to a desired relationship with the current actual time is implementation-defined. As represented in seconds since the Epoch, each and every day shall be accounted for by exactly 86400 seconds.

Note:

The last three terms of the expression add in a day for each year that follows a leap year starting with the first leap year since the Epoch. The first term adds a day every 4 years starting in 1973, the second subtracts a day back out every 100 years starting in 2001, and the third adds a day back in every 400 years starting in 2001. The divisions in the formula are integer divisions; that is, the remainder is discarded leaving only the integer quotient.

If there were a UN*X API to get a count of seconds since the Epoch (in addition to, or instead of, a call to get "seconds since the Epoch"), and a UN*X API to convert those to UTC and local time labels, that would get what you want. Modulo making it work with NTP, the former could be implemented with less difficulty than a call to get "seconds since the Epoch", and the latter is called "the Olson code complete with the leap seconds database".

However, that would then require some mechanism to allow code to schedule something to happen at a given UTC label; simply calculating the UNIX time for that UTC label, getting the current UNIX time, and scheduling it for then-now seconds in the future is insufficient, as the UNIX time for a given UTC label in the future might change if a leap second is scheduled between then and now. (Note that if you support scheduling something to happen at a given local civil time label would already require correction of that sort to handle DST rule changes.) This would also have to do something if you schedule an event for YYYY-DD-MM 23:59:59 and a negative leap second occurs so that there is no 23:59:59 on YYYY-DD-MM; "something" might be "let somebody know and ask them to correct it" or "do it at 00:00:00 on the next day", perhaps depending on the reason why it's scheduled.

So far all I've heard about is affected Linux systems, did Windows and OS X just fine?

The glitch mostly affected POSIX compliant operating systems as POSIX specifies a day as 86400.

So you're saying the glitch could affect OS X (or, at least, OS X Snow Leopard - although Leopard was also registered - but I'll bet Lion behaves, and Mountain Lion will behave, the same way)?

Specific versions of OSX are Unix. Others are not.

Leopard and Snow Leopard are Unix.

http://www.opengroup.org/csq/public/search.mhtml?t=XY1&w=apple&sort=bycomponent&display=short&pid=11720

The others are not officially Unix, but Unix-like.

Not just UNIX-like, OS X is CERTIFIED UNIX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification

Actually, only Leopard and Snow Leopard are certified; Lion isn't (and pre-Leopard versions weren't).

Blah, I should have looked it up before posting. OSX version 10.5 and higher running on Intel processors are UNIX 03 certified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification#OS_X

Actually, OS X 10.5 and 10.6 running on Intel processors are UNIX 03 certified, but 10.7 isn't.

But you were probably responding to the poster distinguishing between "OS X" and "UNIX". The problem is that "UNIX" can either mean "an operating system from AT&T^WNovell^WSCO with "UNIX" in its name" or "a specification for operating system APIs and commands". The UNIX trademark refers to the latter, and, in that sense, "UNIX" is not an operating system, it's a specification, and it's not clear what it would mean to have malware targeted at it, unless the malware is portable malware that only uses Single UNIX Specification APIs.

OS X has BSD roots and is an officially certified UNIX. Linux is not.