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The Spirit Of Unix vs. The Unix Trademark
BSD Forums writes "This article conveys the message that Linux, BSD, and Darwin continue what Unix started. InfoWorld's Tom Yager says that several readers took him to task for referring to Linux, BSD, and OS X as Unix. He feels that Unix has a rich legacy that deserves to be preserved and accurately conveyed to new generations of computer scientists. It rattles many of us to see that the operating systems that best exemplify Unix traditions today aren't Unix at all."
It's not one any more, it's a happy variety of dialects. So why not call it Multics? After all, that's where it started...
I say I run unix. I in fact run Linux and FreeBSD. I don't care if *you* don't consider anything other than AT&T's code unix. It makes life easier to say "unix" when you mean "unix-like operating system" or "operating system that conforms to the single unix specification", etc.
What's especially funny is the BSD people who like to claim that BSD is unix based. Perhaps they forgot the whole point of 4.4BSD-lite and the AT&T lawsuits. The point was to get rid of all the original unix source. So stop being so high and mighty, you're not special.
One of the signs that a product has become a commodity is the use of a brandname as a generic description. Calling all modern, stable, portable, everything-is-a-file, my-great-grandfather-ran-on-32k-words-on-a-PDP-11 operating systems "UNIX" is technically inaccurate but culturally accurate.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
For everyone else, it looks like Unix, it acts like Unix, it smells like Unix. It's Unix.
It amazes me that Slashbots can criticize players like Microsoft for ignoring standards when it suits them, then turn around and do exactly the same thing themselves. Standards exist and are worth protecting because they make everyone's lives easier. If an OS is UNIX98 or POSIX compliant, then if means if you want to port your software to that platform, you can make certain assumptions before you start work that will vastly increase your chances of success within time and budget. And what "looks and smells" like Unix covers a wide range of ground, even Minix "looks and smells" a lot like Unix, but it simply doesn't have the capability of Linux let alone Solaris. An OS like OpenVMS isn't Unix, but you can compile and run plenty of Unix software on it, because of its POSIX API. NT with Cygwin can "look and smell" like Unix, but under the hood it's totally different.
If anyone can come along and write an OS that has $ as its prompt and you can type ls to get a list of files, does that make it a Unix? No, there's more to it than that. And that's why the Unix(r) brand exists.
You're taking me a little too literally here. I'm talking about Linux, BSD, and MacOS X, as is the article. They follow most Unix standards, their aim is to be as much like the official Unix as possible, and in the case of BSD, they have as much or even more influence on Unix culture than the official licensed UNIX(tm) itself. They're enough like Unix that they might as well be, and stepping around the term is just awkward and unnecessary in most usage.
[insert witty quote here]
I have long since taken the attitude that UNIX now stands as a model for an OS. Linux, openBSD, netBSD, Solaris and OSX are all implementations of that model. Each one has its differences and perculiarities, but they are all based on the UNIX model. The great thing about this is that once you understand the model, moving from between the different implementations is easy. And for every from of hardware there is a UNIX model OS. So you can UNIX anywhere.
One of the essential aspects of the UNIX model is 'openness', which promote clarity and understanding.
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
Better yet:
X.I.N.U
Xinu
Is
Not
Unix
Halb
we need an "-1 Plain wrong" moderation option!
Why? If you give away your coal, you don't have it any more. If you share a new idea, and we all follow your habit, then we all have so much more that the increase becomes qualitative rather than just quantitative, and we get the sort of emergent phenomena that have turned the market's paradigms upside-down.
"Unix" has come to mean more than the trademarked code of its current ownership corporation, and more than the trademarked code of its parent corporation. That change in meaning has occurred because of the way the the term has been used by the call-them-"generations" of programmers whose efforts and dedication to specific, commercially-unorthodox principles have been the direct cause of its dominance.
It's become a philosophy. Of course, the name of the philosophy is an old AT&T / Bell Labs, then Berkeley product name, but the right to control that trademark was lost when the companies that had the rights to the name in days long past made use of the genius of those for whom it became a philosophy. They got paid for their investment! They profited by letting it happen, and that's good. It's too late now to turn back the clock, and if they (AT&T, et al.) had kept "Unix" under lock and key as closely as a coal company must keep control of its coal, they would never have seen their brainchild become the core of much of the world's commerce and communication.
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
For simplicity I use the term *nix becouse this is the term used when I came on the Internet as all the Unix and Unix clones all were ___ix or ___nix.
Most *nix systems are eather Unix in name or in spirit some are nither but it's impossable to be both.
The old AT&T 3B2 user manual would talk about the Unix community. How it evolved by people freely adding something to Unix.
This seams ironic considering the 3B2 was made under AT&Ts new Unix liccens instead of the original one.
The original liccens was more "free" (as in speach and beer).
After the break up AT&T was free to compete with other companys and changed over to a new restrictive liccens that gave AT&T control over Unix it never had before.
Unix grew up as a almost-free operating system and the Unix community was happy to help it grow.
But when Unix transformed into a commertal product from AT&T with a restrictive liccens this came to an end.
But BSD remained true to the spirit of Unix as did the never quite complete GNU system.
Today most people consider Gnu/Linux[1] to be the home of the free software world. The heart and soul of the old Unix lives here.
While SCO has the soulless body of Unix. Actually suing IBM simply becouse they added code to Linux.
I've always felt that it wasn't Unix if you didn't include a C compiler yet many Unix venders did just that. Offering the compiler sepretly.
The idea that being able to modify the operating system was important is lost on todays Unixes.
But it's not lost on BSD and Gnu/Linux[1].
[1] Normally I just call it Linux but for the function of the point the title Gnu/Linux just works better.
I don't actually exist.
Open Source code is its own standard. Standards are for secretive companies, for companies that don't trust each other, and for monopolists.
Uhh, right. Let's take something simple, like SMTP or POP3. There are multiple implementations of these standards, from sendmail/popper to Exchange. If they don't conform to the same standard, no-one gets their email. But since they do, not only can email get from A to B, but you can feasibly replace one with the other. How does that benefit a monopolist in any way? You want to talk open source, what if sendmail and qmail don't use the same SMTP standard? What if Apache and Mozilla don't use the same HTTP standard? See, saying "the code is the standard" only works if there is only one implementation. For everything else, you need a neutral third party to make sure everyone plays by the rules.
There hasn't been much movement on formal standards, at least among Unices.
POSIX, NFS, DCE, CDE/Motif, X11, Kerberos, etc etc etc. How can you not have heard of these?
Everyone should read this.
Applies to Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Darwin/Others as well as NetBSD.
There's a very detailed and interesting story, hosted in Oreilly which describes the history of UNIX.
"Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix- From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable " remembers how UNIX evolved from it's early days as a proprietary software owned by AT&T; branching over to the educational field as BSD (Berkeley System Distribution), and finally ending up as various flavors of SysV and BSD's both proprietary, and freely-redistributable.
The link: here!
Any traditional (orthodox) Christian would say "You can't reinterpret Christianity, and still call it Christianity", "You can't pick and choose, and still call it Christianity", "You can't break up the whole, and still call it Christianity".
Tell that to Martin Luther.