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osOpinion has just posted an update to their story. Now stating that OS X has achieved UNIX certification. Appearently Open Group has updated their list of UNIX approved OS's. score 1 for apple

Right at the bottom of the article there is a link to:

http://www.unix-systems.org/what_is_unix/single_un ix_specification.html#platform


Which includes apple in their lists of vendors who support their UNIX specification.

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Why was this modded down??? The link is on topic, and extremely informative in that it links to a page which lists Apple as an official Unix vendor.

There is a generic term. It's "unix"

No. UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, a division of The Open Group. LINUX is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. The generic term for systems with a working implementation of the functions in unistd.h is "POSIX conforming systems."

clicked on the link at work and it resembled gay porn

Well at least it wasn't Goatse.cx.

I was more concerned about the infringement of unixsex.com on The Open Group's UNIX® trademark.

Now I may be wrong but isn't BSD (and OpenBSD) descended from the original Unix, and is much older than Linux?

Others have answered this question, but I do not think any have done so completely.

There is a decent History of Unix page on unix-systems.org which can help you. The timeline table further down the page is better than the lame text at the top, which glosses over too much.

1969: Unix. PDP-7 at bell labs. Reportedly intended for writing games.
1971: First edition of AT&T Unix.
... 1975: Sixth edition. Unix makes it out formally. BSD 1.x is derived from this.

Okay, so BSD has its roots in the original unix, but not until 1975. While technically speaking, there is a parental chain from the original unix to BSD, which grew into 4.4-lite, which made it out and more or less became the parent of Free/Net/OpenBSD...

1984: 4.2BSD (TCP/IP)
1986: 4.3BSD (DNS Server)
1991: Torvalds begins writing linux (unrelated, but significant data; Note how far after modern BSD we are - Modern meaning 4.2. TCP, after all, is (these days) a big part of what makes Unix Unix.)
1993: 4.4BSD. Final release of Berkeley Unix, kinda.
1994: 4.4BSD-lite. THIS IS IT, BABY.

4.4BSD-Lite is important because, as the timeline states, "BSD 4.4-Lite eliminated all code claimed to infringe on USL/Novell". Novell took ownership of USL (Unix System Labs) in 1993. It was the first version of Unix actually provided by Berkeley that was unencumbered by the hosed up Novell-owned USL code. It was also the last version of Unix produced by Berkeley, since everyone else started producing BSD OSes for them. How nice :)

So 4.4-Lite can be distributed to anyone, whether or not they have the expensive (Except to academia) source license. People everywhere begin hacking it up to run on, well, anything they have around. M88k boards. VAXen. Sparcs. Whatever.

So now we have three major free BSD implementations, and probably a host of others which are stagnating on a gopher site someplace, and we may never see them.

Anyway, NetBSD's History:

The source for NetBSD is derived from 386BSD 0.1, patched with the 0.2.2 patch kit. In addition, many programs in UCB's second BSD Networking Software Release which were missing from 386BSD have been integrated into NetBSD, some of the changes from the upcoming 0.2.3 patch kit have been included, and many local additions and bug fixes have been performed. NetBSD is currently 100% binary compatible with 386BSD, so programs like XFree86 which are already available for 386BSD will install and run on NetBSD as easily as on 386BSD. NetBSD would not be possible were it not for the work of the UCB Computer Systems Research Group, which released Net/2, or the work of William and Lynne Jolitz, who brought 386BSD into the world, or the work of the thousands of contributors to Net/2 and 386BSD. NetBSD is the product of the efforts of a large group of people, and we believe that that group should have a say in deciding NetBSD's future.

386BSD was based on Berkeley Net/2, which was apparently a subrelease of 4.3BSD, maybe? It's hard to say. This ASCII BSD FAQ has more information in section 0.1 about the origins of the *BSD family. I will excerpt the interesting part here:

There were several version of BSD roaming around, but they all had one thing in common. You HAD to have a source code license to the original Unix source to get a working version going. The bulk of the code was written at Berkeley, much of it by long-haired computer geeks, complete with bad complexions and pocket protectors. Many Master's Degrees were built on what was to follow.

Then, suddenly, someone realized the amount of source code from the original Unix distribution was pretty much down to zilch. They decided that making the distribution available to the whole world (not just the select Unix license holders) seemed like a pretty 'groovy' (to use the vernacular) idea. From that came the Net distribution.

William and Lynne Jolitz, with their standard flair and panache, decided to write the pieces that needed to be written. From that decision came 386BSD Version 0.0. Generally considered to be unusable, it was nonetheless a major coup, in that one no longer needed the dreaded 'source license' to produce working operating system images.

So, now you know (vaguely) where 386BSD came from; Like I said, BSD. I used NetBSD as my lead-in to all of this because it was the first derivative of a source tracable back to the beginning. I still can't tell if it was based on 4.2 or 4.3; The tape was labeled "Berkeley Net Release/2". Sounds like 4.2.

That same ascii FAQ provides this gem:

If you take a look at the README files that accompany each of these packages, you will find that each is based as closely as possible to BSD 4.4-Lite. The core development team for FreeBSD used the 4.4 Lite distribution and re-engineered the missing pieces to come up with the the current version of FreeBSD. The NetBSD developers started with the existing 386BSD files, and compared them to the unencumbered, freely releasable files from BSD 4.4. For both groups, any files which were not available (through being encumbered) were written from scratch to provide the functionality that was needed. Either way, both systems are close to BSD 4.4. Of course, each has differences that make it different from the other, and different from regular BSD 4.4.

So that tells you an awful lot about that. Most of us know where OpenBSD came from, so I won't rehash that; Suffice to say, you can probably find PLENTY of commentary about it by doing a websearch. Terms you might consider are "Theo OpenBSD FreeBSD code fork", but that's just a guess. I haven't tried them. Just try to read it with an open mind, heh. Good luck!

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ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

Now I may be wrong but isn't BSD (and OpenBSD) descended from the original Unix, and is much older than Linux?

Others have answered this question, but I do not think any have done so completely.

There is a decent History of Unix page on unix-systems.org which can help you. The timeline table further down the page is better than the lame text at the top, which glosses over too much.

1969: Unix. PDP-7 at bell labs. Reportedly intended for writing games.
1971: First edition of AT&T Unix.
... 1975: Sixth edition. Unix makes it out formally. BSD 1.x is derived from this.

Okay, so BSD has its roots in the original unix, but not until 1975. While technically speaking, there is a parental chain from the original unix to BSD, which grew into 4.4-lite, which made it out and more or less became the parent of Free/Net/OpenBSD...

1984: 4.2BSD (TCP/IP)
1986: 4.3BSD (DNS Server)
1991: Torvalds begins writing linux (unrelated, but significant data; Note how far after modern BSD we are - Modern meaning 4.2. TCP, after all, is (these days) a big part of what makes Unix Unix.)
1993: 4.4BSD. Final release of Berkeley Unix, kinda.
1994: 4.4BSD-lite. THIS IS IT, BABY.

4.4BSD-Lite is important because, as the timeline states, "BSD 4.4-Lite eliminated all code claimed to infringe on USL/Novell". Novell took ownership of USL (Unix System Labs) in 1993. It was the first version of Unix actually provided by Berkeley that was unencumbered by the hosed up Novell-owned USL code. It was also the last version of Unix produced by Berkeley, since everyone else started producing BSD OSes for them. How nice :)

So 4.4-Lite can be distributed to anyone, whether or not they have the expensive (Except to academia) source license. People everywhere begin hacking it up to run on, well, anything they have around. M88k boards. VAXen. Sparcs. Whatever.

So now we have three major free BSD implementations, and probably a host of others which are stagnating on a gopher site someplace, and we may never see them.

Anyway, NetBSD's History:

The source for NetBSD is derived from 386BSD 0.1, patched with the 0.2.2 patch kit. In addition, many programs in UCB's second BSD Networking Software Release which were missing from 386BSD have been integrated into NetBSD, some of the changes from the upcoming 0.2.3 patch kit have been included, and many local additions and bug fixes have been performed. NetBSD is currently 100% binary compatible with 386BSD, so programs like XFree86 which are already available for 386BSD will install and run on NetBSD as easily as on 386BSD. NetBSD would not be possible were it not for the work of the UCB Computer Systems Research Group, which released Net/2, or the work of William and Lynne Jolitz, who brought 386BSD into the world, or the work of the thousands of contributors to Net/2 and 386BSD. NetBSD is the product of the efforts of a large group of people, and we believe that that group should have a say in deciding NetBSD's future.

386BSD was based on Berkeley Net/2, which was apparently a subrelease of 4.3BSD, maybe? It's hard to say. This ASCII BSD FAQ has more information in section 0.1 about the origins of the *BSD family. I will excerpt the interesting part here:

There were several version of BSD roaming around, but they all had one thing in common. You HAD to have a source code license to the original Unix source to get a working version going. The bulk of the code was written at Berkeley, much of it by long-haired computer geeks, complete with bad complexions and pocket protectors. Many Master's Degrees were built on what was to follow.

Then, suddenly, someone realized the amount of source code from the original Unix distribution was pretty much down to zilch. They decided that making the distribution available to the whole world (not just the select Unix license holders) seemed like a pretty 'groovy' (to use the vernacular) idea. From that came the Net distribution.

William and Lynne Jolitz, with their standard flair and panache, decided to write the pieces that needed to be written. From that decision came 386BSD Version 0.0. Generally considered to be unusable, it was nonetheless a major coup, in that one no longer needed the dreaded 'source license' to produce working operating system images.

So, now you know (vaguely) where 386BSD came from; Like I said, BSD. I used NetBSD as my lead-in to all of this because it was the first derivative of a source tracable back to the beginning. I still can't tell if it was based on 4.2 or 4.3; The tape was labeled "Berkeley Net Release/2". Sounds like 4.2.

That same ascii FAQ provides this gem:

If you take a look at the README files that accompany each of these packages, you will find that each is based as closely as possible to BSD 4.4-Lite. The core development team for FreeBSD used the 4.4 Lite distribution and re-engineered the missing pieces to come up with the the current version of FreeBSD. The NetBSD developers started with the existing 386BSD files, and compared them to the unencumbered, freely releasable files from BSD 4.4. For both groups, any files which were not available (through being encumbered) were written from scratch to provide the functionality that was needed. Either way, both systems are close to BSD 4.4. Of course, each has differences that make it different from the other, and different from regular BSD 4.4.

So that tells you an awful lot about that. Most of us know where OpenBSD came from, so I won't rehash that; Suffice to say, you can probably find PLENTY of commentary about it by doing a websearch. Terms you might consider are "Theo OpenBSD FreeBSD code fork", but that's just a guess. I haven't tried them. Just try to read it with an open mind, heh. Good luck!

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ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

According to The Open Group, there is no such thing as a "UNIX-like" system. I personally use the term "nixclones" for GNU systems (GNU/Linux, Cygwin) and BSD systems. Or is that also a trademark abuse?
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?

Seriously, what on earth do you mean when you say Unix?

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. (The official legal form of trademarks is in all caps, no matter what ESR's Jargon File says.)

What this means is that an operating system is a UNIX® system if

• the system conforms to a version of the Single UNIX Specification, and
• the publisher is willing to jack up the prices to pay TOG royalties per unit for the UNIX trademark. These run into five or six figures annually, making the trademark program available only to large corporations.

For non-GUI, UNIX specific programming details, I've found the following to be very useful:

• UNIX System Programming by Haviland, Gray, Salama. Published by Addison Wesley.
• Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens. Published by Addison Wesley.
• UNIX Network Programming (volumes I and II) by W. Richard Stevens. Published by Prentice Hall.
• Documents from http://www.unix-systems.org/ (The Open Group).

the union of "Unix" and "Not Unix" is "everything"

OK, here's the UNIX web site.
Here's the GNU's Not UNIX web site.
Neither of those sites has everything.

The UNIX® system is optimized for footprint (it originally ran in 1 MB machines IIRC). The GNU system, OTOH, is optimized for speed. This "use more RAM if it'll improve performance and/or simplicity" mentality helps counter copyright infringement allegations by UNIX system vendors against GNU system developers who have never read UNIX system code.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

By your logic, if the GNU/Linux® System is a direct rip-off of the UNIX® System, then it's no better than piracy...
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

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Nope. That's owned by X/Open aka "The Open Group"

Caldera does get the source to Unixware & SCO Unix, I think.

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.

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group!

you can read it here: http://www.unix-systems.org/trademark.html

linux isn't even a true Unix

Being not a true UNIX® system lets the GNU system (the system that runs on the Linux® kernel) be both good and free; UNIX system vendors have to pay royalties.

A while back, they switched low-fidelity playback from RealAudio to MPEG layer 3:

• MP3 streaming works better on Eunuchs and Mac machines, and
• "Real.com" is already taken.

POSIX actually requires Motif.

Indeed? Do you have a citation to support this claim?

There may be some X/Open standard that requires it (although I don't see any X stuff in the W-Z section of the API tables for the UNIX 98 spec), but I have not heard of any POSIX standard that requires it. (I think there may be some IEEE standard for the Motif API, but I don't think it's required to claim POSIX conformance - for that matter, there's more than one POSIX standard, so one can probably claim some degree of POSIX conformance merely by offering 1003.1 support.)

emulator is, namely, that which emulates (tries to act like, but is not) an origial product.

So the second system to implement an API is the emulator? All X11 servers but the first implementation (incl. XF86) are emulators, right? And all Java VMs other than the first are emulators, right? And the GNU system is a UNIX® system emulator, right? Microsoft IIS is an NCSA-httpd (now Apache Server) emulator?

with the goal of making a true SCO Linux/Unix (they own the Unix trademark, no?)

UNIX® is a registered trademark of Open Group, but if SCO were successful in bringing the GNU/Linux system up to the Single UNIX® Specification, it could license the trademark.

So what's the generic term for "operating systems that imitate System V"? According to the Open Group's guidelines (PDF here), NetBSD's "UNIX-like" is an abuse of the Trade Mark. There are several abuses and their alternatives listed, but "UNIX-like" is the only abuse listed without an alternative. I've been dropping the U and calling them "*Nix" systems, or simply "Nix" systems.

No, it's not. From the unix(TM) faq...

What is a "Unix-like" operating system?

This term, which is an abuse of the UNIX trademark, and should not be used, is often used in association with products that share some properties in common with systems carrying the UNIX trademark. Users of such terms should consult the trademark usage guidelines, which give numerous examples of how to correctly use the trademark, and make the necessary corrections.

trademark UNIX belongs to AT&T

No, it belongs to the Open Group.

From the Trademark Usage Terms it clearly states "It must not be used as a generic term."

If this site put up unix.com as a be-all *nix site, this this /might/ be in voliation of that (depening on how much the Open Group is willing to spend on lawyers).

Also it could be agrued (not by me) that domain names are case insenitive and there isn't really any way to tell the differance between UNIX.COM and unix.com, which could be taken as a voliation of the (all caps) UNIX trademark

Open Group owns the Unix trademark

Trademark Usage Guide(PDF Format)


Please note:

It must not be used as a generic term.

It must not be used in connection with products, unless the product is licensed to use the mark.

There are detailed guidelines referring to the visual presentation, form and manner of use.

In editorial or articles, but not advertising the trade marks may be used without prior permission - provided that the rules in our Trademark Usage Guide are followed.

I better get some karama for this dammit ;)

Open Group owns the Unix trademark

Trademark Usage Guide(PDF Format)


Please note:

It must not be used as a generic term.

It must not be used in connection with products, unless the product is licensed to use the mark.

There are detailed guidelines referring to the visual presentation, form and manner of use.

In editorial or articles, but not advertising the trade marks may be used without prior permission - provided that the rules in our Trademark Usage Guide are followed.

I better get some karama for this dammit ;)

Open Group owns the Unix trademark

Trademark Usage Guide(PDF Format)


Please note:

It must not be used as a generic term.

It must not be used in connection with products, unless the product is licensed to use the mark.

There are detailed guidelines referring to the visual presentation, form and manner of use.

In editorial or articles, but not advertising the trade marks may be used without prior permission - provided that the rules in our Trademark Usage Guide are followed.

I better get some karama for this dammit ;)

The Open Group's Trademark Usage Guide seems to only consider UNIX written in all caps as the trademark. So perhaps as long as it is written as either unix, or Unix, or unix.com there is no infringement.

Also, I know some cybersqauters have been allowed to register trademarks that include the .com when the word used in the second level of the domain is already a registered tradmark not related to the internet.

Finally, SCO has trademarks on several terms with Unix (using an initial capital U) such as UnixWare, which may also indicate that the consistent use of unix.com wouldn't violate the Open Group's trademark.

__________

I'm afraid that given current US cybersquatting law, and the fact that the Open Group now has title to the UNIX* trademark, anyone bidding on 'unix.com' had better be clear about their rights to use it before bidding.

*UNIX is no longer a trademark of AT&T Bell Labs.

Formally speaking, what makes a UNIX system is adhering to the spec which defines UNIX.

A draft of this is available online and makes a handy reference.

The Single UNIX Specification covers not only the library and system call interfaces, but also the shell commands and utilities, including the command language formerly known as Bourne. ;)

Of course, what we actually understand as UNIX is deeper; one cannot understand what UNIX is outside of the surrounding computing culture.

And this trademark has a web site. That's where you'll find the true definition of UNIX®.

Actually, Linux-based systems are GNU systems; GNU's not Unix (NetBSD is stealing this tagline).

Mac OS 10 has a BSD-heritage public-source kernel called Darwin and can be spelled with an X; does that count?

I'd say any system with multitasking, multiuser, devices with filenames (/dev/*), full POSIX compliance (refer to the Single UNIX® Spec available from the official Unix site), etc. could be called Unix-like.

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...If you add Linux and the lumped-together Unices' market shares. Since they lumped together other Unices, I'll take the liberty to add Linux into the group as well. (Yes, I know Linux in general isn't blessed as Unix by The Open Group, but so what? OS/390 is and it's surely not added into the Unix number.)

So... Unix/Linux now has 40%, passing NT at 38%.

*Oh yeah, UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. ;)

Convincing signs of a TOG "change of heart" would include things like:

• Defining UNIX 1999 or UNIX 2000 in such a way that Linux systems could become branded as UNIX, rather than their current comments

What changes to their current UNIX definition would be required for this?

It is entirely possible the people at Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, (and possibly others) decided that as they're supporting Linux from other perspectives, that the needed to tell TOG that it needs to as well.

Convincing signs of a TOG "change of heart" would include things like:

• Defining UNIX 1999 or UNIX 2000 in such a way that Linux systems could become branded as UNIX, rather than their current comments
• Releasing Motif/CDE in Open Source form.

Shameless Plug: People should help Sponsor XFree86. My local Linux Users Group, NTLUG, is in the process of soliciting that members help sponsor several free software project organizations, including XFree86.

The Trademark holder is the Open group, and they say Unix is anything which implements their specification. This includes many different Unixes, including IBM's OS/390 which is not derived in any way from from AT&T code. Heck, IF NT passed the tests, they'd allow it to be called Unix.

Linux is not currently a certified under any of the Unix standards, but I belive that Caldera has applied for Unix95 certification.

The Trademark holder is the Open group, and they say Unix is anything which implements their specification. This includes many different Unixes, including IBM's OS/390 which is not derived in any way from from AT&T code. Heck, IF NT passed the tests, they'd allow it to be called Unix.

Linux is not currently a certified under any of the Unix standards, but I belive that Caldera has applied for Unix95 certification.

The Trademark holder is the Open group, and they say Unix is anything which implements their specification. This includes many different Unixes, including IBM's OS/390 which is not derived in any way from from AT&T code. Heck, IF NT passed the tests, they'd allow it to be called Unix.

Linux is not currently a certified under any of the Unix standards, but I belive that Caldera has applied for Unix95 certification.

BSD is not UNIX(TM). In fact, BSD as you probably know it (4.4 Lite) is not derived from any original UNIX source code. In 1994, all code from the USL and Novell was removed and replaced with new code for a "lite" release. Browse http://www.unix-systems.org/ for more information. It's not the code heritage that makes a UNIX, it's whether you register yourself for the Open Group blessing and the branding rights.

BSD is not UNIX(TM). In fact, BSD as you probably know it (4.4 Lite) is not derived from any original UNIX source code. In 1994, all code from the USL and Novell was removed and replaced with new code for a "lite" release. Browse http://www.unix-systems.org/ for more information. It's not the code heritage that makes a UNIX, it's whether you register yourself for the Open Group blessing and the branding rights.

BSD is not UNIX(TM). In fact, BSD as you probably know it (4.4 Lite) is not derived from any original UNIX source code. In 1994, all code from the USL and Novell was removed and replaced with new code for a "lite" release. Browse http://www.unix-systems.org/ for more information. It's not the code heritage that makes a UNIX, it's whether you register yourself for the Open Group blessing and the branding rights.