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You're right, this apparently has nothing to do with the IEEE. It isn't even associated with ISO as far as I can tell (the american representative is ANSI)

That said, the confusion may arise from the fact that the IEEE already standardised some parts of UNIX through the POSIX set of standards. These were, I believe, originally intended to make commercial UNIXes play a bit nicer, but the Linux kernel and GNU tools mostly aim to comply with POSIX as well for the sake of standardisation.

Also, I'm not an American, so don't just think I'm being an arrogant yank, but IEEE standards are used throughout the world - many other standards (like firewire, one of the versions of ethernet, wi-fi lans (802.11 stuff) and many other networking bits and bobs) are standardised by IEEE committees, so in many ways they are more influential that professional organisations in other countries. Also, membership of the IEEE is not exclusive to US citizens. I'm not sure exactly how many countries they allow members from, but certainly most UK EE/CS degrees will get you in.

There has been a huge amount of variation between UNIX implementations, but in more recent times standards like POSIX have emerged.

"The name POSIX was suggested by Richard Stallman. It is expected to be pronounced pahz-icks as in positive, not poh-six, or other variations. The pronounciation has been published in an attempt to promulgate a standardized way of referring to a standard operating system interface".

The POSIX subsystem was put there so that Microsoft could compete for government contracts that specified POSIX compatibility in the RFP's.

I could be wrong, but I doubt that Microsoft's POSIX subsystem gets much use. First, there are many POSIX standards, which were designed as a base reference for UNIX-like compatibility. Microsoft only implemented support for POSIX 1. If you try and imagine how loose these standards must be in order for Windows NT 3.51 to meet them, you'll be understanding how meaningless this level of compatibility is. The base level POSIX standards say nothing about the X Window system, for instance.

In practice, Microsoft got NT in to the bidding process for those contracts, and won some of them. Once Windows is selected, the (extremely limited) NT POSIX interfaces are generally ignored in favor of building more robust Win32 code.

The problem is not the filesystem. Only users uncertain about the FileSystem Hierarchy Standard or the basis of the POSIX layout could make that mistake. Once you start installing your own files, you'll find most of them goto /usr/local/share, which, for a Windows, is much the equivelant of C:/Program%20Files.

The problem with RPMs comes out of the libraries used by the individual compiler. The most noticeable of these is when an unsuspecting regular GNOME user tries to install a binary constructed by a Ximian GNOME user. Most often when you're told by your package management utility that the particular package has a dependency issue, over fifty percent of the time, I would bet, it's really complaining about a library someone else has that you don't, and the remainder is typically a particular application it was designed to use. If you installed from sources, you would see, and I'm saying from experience, around 85% of these problems dissipate. A large part of this in thanks to considerate programmers who put the time to write alternative configure lines for the to-be-abstracted make file.

For all other questions about POSIX, feel free to pickup this handy guide

For anyone else with actual standards questions, my email still works (just in case those of you who still care about standards, both of you, still want some guidance).

I had an article on this awhile back ago (toasted like AlaskanUnderachiever's previous four AMD's), but with the site now gone, I can't seem to find it in either google or wayback.

Anyhow, I think it is important that even hardware move over to the open source world. There are three requirements for this to kick off:

An inexpensive system for creating them

Knowledge and understanding of the standards involved

A central repository for updating and dissemination

If a common public utility for creating wafers could come out at fair cost (say, atleast equal to a computer, estimate $800 or so) that would be a major step for the first part. If the group involved at the IEEE for processor standards could freely distribute some or all of the necessary information, similar to as PARC did with POSIX, that would assist in the second. Finally, we would need a FreshMeat equivelant for hardware designs.

Processors are only a beginning...solid state technology, drives and cards would come fast thereafter. Is it an emerging field or something that will remain in the hands of the elite few who actually know the difference between a PSU and an FPU? I can wait you people out...I've been waiting out for the creation of massively distributed Open Source Software before many of you were born!

Why can't every OS be based on a set of common standards and have some proprietary extensions to differentiate itself from the others?

I belive the word you're looking for is POSIX.

Minor point: Richard Stallman is the source of the word POSIX.

The following quote appears in the Introduction to POSIX.1: "The name POSIX was suggested by Richard Stallman. It is expected to be pronounced pahz-icks as in positive, not poh-six, or other variations. The pronounciation has been published in an attempt to promulgate a standardized way of referring to a standard operating system interface".

From The Portable Application Standards Committee (which is part of the IEEE) in the section titled What is POSIX?

The task of defining UNIX is now done by The Open Group.