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i just like to read

ps. i forgot that after I composed i did a search on google for "opengroup history" and found a doc on the unix.org website. I guess it would have been easier to reference that first of all, but I am a lonely geek who found solace in posting this message, even though it is near impossible it will even see the light of day given it is under anonymous posting and several threads deep

I'll scour back under my rock now, thanks for listening.

A bird says that would make the year about 1993. It is entirely too bad. The wise bird tells me imperative for growth history is.

In 1987 a few big name companies, DEC, HP, IBM started up OSF because of concern of royalties and control of ATT (basically feeding control back to the small guys ... err IBM is not that small, whatever) who was broken up in 1984 by the US government for their monopolistic nature on the market place. It was definitely an interesting predicament for ATT. Read up on that. Anyway, OSF gave way to all the things you know about then, POSIX rewrite OSF/2, windowing system X11, the GUI MOTIF, distributed computing (DCE), distributed management (DME).

ATT and Sun were expected to join I guess, but joined another team to create the Archer group which I might have to do a google search as I forget what has come of them.

Anyway other shit happened during this time, mostly Unix vendor wars and such and Linux in 1991.

In 1993, ATT sold Unix labs and rights to Novell. Novell knew it wouldn't fare well holding onto the rights when so much force was against them via Open philosophies that they gave the rights of Unix to X/Open. Novell sold their Unix systems (code, whatever) to SCO. In 1996, or near so, OSF and X/Open merged to become The Open Group. The Open Group sets compatibility up, working with IEEE in creating the POSIX standards. The Open Group is all about working in many environments, which was their prime focus of the company during the "unix wars" in the 80s. Unix in english is The Open Group, and in practice, IBM, Linux, OSX, etc.

"Do they make a version of UNIX? Shit, I don't know."

Not exactly. I'm sure you can figure it out now though.

And yeah, I totally think that Unix could be generic now. It is kinda stupid to make a point of all this, but sometimes we need to break from our coding and learn from the past.

I hope my bird has proved informational...

I'm not at all sure if Linux could pass, since it has, eg, a rename(2) system call in place of unlink.

I'm not at all sure what prompted that. Of course GNU/Linux systems support the unlink system call. You can see the GNU C library implementation of unlink and the Open Group specification of unlink. As GNU/Linux attempts to be compatible with Unix, it would be ridiculous for it to not provide unlink.

To be able to use the UNIX brand, a system must be certified to comply with the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). The SUS typically states what the interface and behavior must be, but not the exact implementation. From the above-mentioned documentation, the unlink system call seems to be compliant with the specification.

The real issue with GNU/Linux systems is certification. Even if they do provide a working implementation of SUS, each release must be certified by The Open Group as compliant. This is reportedly quite a lengthy, expensive process.

That said, there are probably aspects of a GNU/Linux system that do not conform to SUS, such as the varying threading implementations. Lately, however, Red Hat has been encouraging the use of NPTL, an implementation of POSIX Threads, so it is conceivable that someone might try to certify a particular GNU/Linux distribution as UNIX some time in the near future.

I'm not at all sure if Linux could pass, since it has, eg, a rename(2) system call in place of unlink.

I'm not at all sure what prompted that. Of course GNU/Linux systems support the unlink system call. You can see the GNU C library implementation of unlink and the Open Group specification of unlink. As GNU/Linux attempts to be compatible with Unix, it would be ridiculous for it to not provide unlink.

To be able to use the UNIX brand, a system must be certified to comply with the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). The SUS typically states what the interface and behavior must be, but not the exact implementation. From the above-mentioned documentation, the unlink system call seems to be compliant with the specification.

The real issue with GNU/Linux systems is certification. Even if they do provide a working implementation of SUS, each release must be certified by The Open Group as compliant. This is reportedly quite a lengthy, expensive process.

That said, there are probably aspects of a GNU/Linux system that do not conform to SUS, such as the varying threading implementations. Lately, however, Red Hat has been encouraging the use of NPTL, an implementation of POSIX Threads, so it is conceivable that someone might try to certify a particular GNU/Linux distribution as UNIX some time in the near future.

Please permit me to attempt to influence your views on the issue of the capitalization of ""Unix".

Meanwhile the Open Group is the owner of UNIX(tm), as sold by Novell (in the past), SCO, and of course IBM. Also, Digital, yes? They even used to call it Digital UNIX. Say, does anyone know the direct descendance of Digital UNIX? Did it just come from the OSF/1 sources or what? I'm missing that piece of the puzzle.

Anyway, what with the desire of the original author to call it Unix, and the fact that the Open Group posesses a copyright on UNIX anyway... Well, that's how I feel about it anyway.

To quote from the Open Group:

"From February 1995, computer systems have carried the UNIX brand if:


They guarantee to support the services specified in the Single UNIX Specification.


Customers can identify UNIX certified products by the Open Brand logo and the mandatory attribution declaring to which version of the specification the product complies:
UNIX 93 applies to UNIX system products which pre-date the Single UNIX Specification.

UNIX 95 applies to UNIX system products which conform to the Single UNIX Specification.

UNIX 98 applies to UNIX system products which conform to the Single UNIX Specification , Version 2.

The mark to be associated with the Single UNIX Specification, Version 3 is under development, see the platform pages for the latest information.

In licensing the UNIX brand a vendor warrants and represents that every certified product:


Conforms to the specification.
Meets The Open Group's test and certification requirements.
Will continue to conform to the specification.
Will be rectified within an agreed time should it be found to be non-conformant.

UNIX certification is widely recognized as the international symbol of assurance in open systems. By the end of 2001, the value of procurements of open systems referencing the brand had exceeded $25 billion. "

So, from a technical standpoint you can see that if it meets the standards (UNIX98, UNIX95, UNIX93, or a soon to be updated standard) LINUX, FREEBSD, or any other OS can be branded 'UNIX' legally.

However, in spoken discourse (and by spoken I mean not only verbal, but written words attributed to journal, informal, or fiction genres) I think it perfectly acceptable to say 'unix' when it would be more accurate to say 'Linux', or 'FreeBSD', as mentioned previously in the example of 'Kleenex' becoming a generic term for 'tissue'. The verbal lexicon will continue to change and reflect our understandings of the effective reality (Linux contains many of the standards contained in UNIX98 for example, and for all intents and purposes is indistenguishable from a branded UNIX to an end user)

Unix keepers of the flame should not find issue with this usage, since it really serves to pay homage to the roots of all Posix compliant operating systems - UNIX. Without the brainchild of AT&T Labs, we would not be here discussing this subject. Just as well, as the article cited at the head of this thread indicates, the tradition of brainstorming inovation across a free community will continue to drive changes which will find their way into the standard whether the UNIX purists like it or not. As Bruce Lee stressed: internalize what works - and the unix paradigm of open development works.

Perhaps it's not called Essential UNIX Administration because UNIX is a trademark? And this book is about a generic class of operating systems, not one specifically?

The only problem with that is SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. Novell gave the trademark to X/Open (now part of the Open Group) before selling the rest of it's UNIX business to SCO. Anyone who produces an OS that passes the compliance test suites and pays money to the Open Group to certify their test results can use the UNIX trademark. (See http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/the_brand.html for the exact requirements.)

The only problem with that is SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. Novell gave the trademark to X/Open (now part of the Open Group) before selling the rest of it's UNIX business to SCO. Anyone who produces an OS that passes the compliance test suites and pays money to the Open Group to certify their test results can use the UNIX trademark. (See http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/the_brand.html for the exact requirements.)

No, The Open Group owns the Unix trademark, and licenses it to any OS that meets their certification requirements. Novell gave it away before selling USL to SCO.

Try upgrading to a better OS. ;-)

Unix is a registerd trademark ad can only be used by software derived from the original AT&T code.

No. The "Open Group have held the rights for some time now. The make their money certifying products to XPG and Single Unix standards. You pass the conformance tests, you get to use the name.

"So Linux is Unix.
Why should it not be?"

Because it isn't! Unix is a registered trademark and its holders don't like it used loosely.

More information can by found in the OpenGroup and Unix pages.

My internet connection isn't working well, so I couldn't check them for accuracy.

Kind of like the suck-ass The Open Group, how ironic isn't it when a group is completely closed and is named that way.
Not to mention that the fags stole a BSD-gurus domain, see this for the real bizarreness.
The world would be better without lawyer, buy a shotgun today and make this world a better place to live.

Open standards are normally cited as the basis of OSS. Closed standards are the problem (see Word format), where there is no way to be sure you are actually going to be compatible. Open standards allow freedom of choice for the app-user, encourage competition on the basis of functionality and are generally a good thing(tm).

Anyway, the link on the page can be followed to the spec, free registration required.

If you follow through a few levels of links from the artice, the standard is available online (for free) at:

http://www.unix.org/version3/online.html

You have to register (your name and email address) and agree to some terms and conditions to be allowed to read it.

Interestingly they also thought it important to answer the seemingly pointless question : how many API's are there? with a bar chart showing the number in a variety of specifications!

If you follow through a few levels of links from the artice, the standard is available online (for free) at:

http://www.unix.org/version3/online.html

You have to register (your name and email address) and agree to some terms and conditions to be allowed to read it.

Interestingly they also thought it important to answer the seemingly pointless question : how many API's are there? with a bar chart showing the number in a variety of specifications!