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Can GNU Ever Be Unix?
An anonymous reader writes "The question isn't whether Linux can be certified as Unix. At least some distributions no doubt can. But who would pay for it? And is it worth the trouble? Jem Matzan asks these questions on NewsForge, and reminds us that the Open Group, not SCO, owns the Unix trademark,"
Is there really a good reason why would GNU be considered as UNIX officially? GNU has it's own credibility. What is UNIX anyway? Does anyone have a concrete definition of what UNIX is right now (no historical reasons, not the fact that the filesystem starts with /).
The UNIX specifications (93, 95, 98 and 03) specifically define what can be called a UNIX. Before then (each number is a year btw), I believe all you can do is combine all the generally accepted unix based systems (UNIX, BSD, AmigaOS, Xenix, etc) and accept that there was a time when there was no really accepted 'standard' and everyone just did thngs a similar way
Linux deviates from Posix in several ways, and at least one of them is deliberate - because Linus is convinced that his way is better. Posix can't change because that would break all the existing and past unixes. IMHO Linus is unlikely to change because he believes in the advantages of his way.
(I don't recall what the particular difference was but as I recall Linus had a very good point. Security? Robustness? Anyhow it should be trivial to look it up - which I'd do if I had the time just now.)
And I don't see that it really matters, since they can continue as two operating systems and virtually anything will operate well on both, and some things break even crossing between Posix-compatible systems. Linux is doing quite well as is and may end up dominating. The rumors of the demise of the BSDs seem overblown. And who knows what will come next.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
UNIX® describes any operating system sold under a brand licensing agreement with the Open Group. This requires the product to pass a checklist that includes certification to the Single UNIX Specification (free reg. req.) on a given set of supported hardware, based in part on product testing, and payment of brand fees pursuant to the Trademark Licensing Agreement (PDF). Often these brand fees are high enough to shut out publishers of low-volume operating system products.
Before the Open Group had the trademark and developed the certification process, AT&T held the trademark and might allow AT&T source licensees to use it. In the later years, they had a certification process that became the initial Open Group certification. When AT&T owned it, anything marked as Unix had some amount of AT&T code as its base. BSD hadn't still contained AT&T code, the Net2 release was in 1994, so all commercial BSD based systems (older SunOS, NeXT, older SGI, etc.) were derivatives of a common code base . Xenix was a based on an early Bell Labs release. (I don't know where the reference to AmigaOS came from.)
The AT&T conformance was mostly to prove that when vendors made local modifications, they didn't mess anything up.