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Can GNU Ever Be Unix?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the how-much-wood-could-a-woodchuck-chuck dept.

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,"

12 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Who cares? by Fished · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Who cares if Linux is Unix at this point? We are rapidly approaching the point at which UNIX is a Linux-like operating system rather than Linux being a UNIX-like operating system. I'm more or less convinced that proprietary UNIX is dead as a major force in the market. Moving forward, Linux will be setting the agenda and proprietary UNIX will be playing catch up.

    This is particularly evident when you notice that the major improvements in some recent version of Solaris (8 & 9, but not 10 apparently) is to add more open source software and stability improvements.

    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  2. Boy -- talk about your pointless questions... by YankeeInExile · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it is almost certain that some distro of Linux could easily pass OG's test suite. It is also almost a certainty that FSF/GNU would never opt for it on religious grounds.

    The rest of the thread is now available for stupid /. jokes.

    In Soviet Russia, The Open Group petitions GNU for certification.

    --
    How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
    1. Re:Boy -- talk about your pointless questions... by imkonen · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Is there are particular reason that FSF/GNU would object to certification? I haven't read the 55 pages of requirements, but I didn't get the impression that either "closed source", "not free to modify" or anything else incompatible with the GPL are part of the requirements. If you take a certified version and modify it, you undoubtedly can't call it certified anymore, but you're still free to redistribute your modified, "no-longer certified as Unix" version.

      But I think the more significant point is that it's not FSF/GNU who would have the most incentive to get a distro certified as Unix. As the article pointed out, it's probably the hardware companies like IBM and Sun who would find it worthwhile.

  3. All your Linux Standard Base... by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    GNU/Linux seems to be evolving as its own standard

    And this standard is called LSB.

  4. Why? by toupsie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What's the point? To be facetious, Unix is old and busted, linux is the new hotness. Instead of being focused on the past, look to the future. Being stamped "Unix" doesn't have the same meaning today as it did ten years ago. Bean counters today aren't asking about a Unix solution but a Linux one. Its the tech buzz word of the last 5 years. To the general public Linux has better name recognition than Unix. In fact, I commonly hear non-tech people referring to real Unix systems as "Linux".

    --
    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
  5. Re:Who cares? by Zeinfeld · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Who cares if Linux is Unix at this point? We are rapidly approaching the point at which UNIX is a Linux-like operating system rather than Linux being a UNIX-like operating system.

    I have been saying that for several years now. UNIX is all but dead. The only commercial UNIX likely to still be arround in ten years time as an ongoing product is OS/X. Solaris will have long since joined IRIX, Digital UNIX and VMS as O/S you can still buy and occasionaly see a minor upgrade for it.

    There is a basic set of core functions that O/S do and this has not changed in principle for over a decade. Log based file systems, threads that work etc are now standard, but none of this was new ten years ago.

    The interesting stuff all takes place either above or below the O/S layer. .NET, J2EE etc are where interesting stuff is happening.

    At the driver level I think that both Unix and Windows have the model hopelessly wrong. We have at last got past the point where we have to recompile the kernel for each new driver. But drivers are still mostly executable code while the differences between devices of the same genre are with very few exceptions the type of thing that can be described by code tables.

    I would like to see device manufaturers get out of the device driver writing business, have a genuinely generic driver in the O/S and discover the repetoire of a particular device by reading a configuration file - preferably one that can be read from the device. From a pragmatic point of view XML would probably be a good match for the task since you would inevitably need structured data and a way to extend the basic data structures.

    Unix once had this with the printcap and termcap files. Unfortunately people just seem to be unable to resist turing complete code.

    --
    Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
    Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
  6. Re:No. Unless Linus or Posix makes a change. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sure he does. But he understands that he's working for the distro companies. If RedHat/Suse/IBM/etc thought it was a priority to get UNIX-Certified, Linus would merge their patches.

    Note that Linus did a 180 on "Linux Threads" versus "POSIX Threads" because Linux vendors wanted portability.

  7. UNIX matters by mnmn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    well, it mattered to me.

    Back in the days, around 1995, my friends and I were looking for any UNIX to put on our machines to learn. We tried an old copy of SCO Unix which didnt work, and were busy snooping till we found Linux just as it was getting popular online. We got into Linux because we were out looking for UNIX.

    Nowadays I've got AIX and Solaris on ultrasparc to play with, so I can finally brag about knowing 'unix', but would be real nice if Linux is called UNIX. Even though SCO has spilled cold water on the brand name, it still carries enough weight, and maturity of two decades, to get attention. Linux is still new to the scene, and UNIX has carried the full weight of the Internet since its birth... that means something.

    Linux means alot more now, so can UNIX be Linux, or at least its former self? Thats possible, if Linux is branded UNIX, and UNIX can once again claim to be a popular flexible modern OS. Cant do that with SCO Unixware.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    1. Re:UNIX matters by boaworm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I know that this is not entirely correct, but this is the way it "feels" like for me, personally.

      UNIX is the actual operating system (which Linux has made a very powerful and capable clone of). It could be OS X, Solaris, AIX, *BSD or whatever. Fine, now I have my UNIX station, what am I going to do with it ?

      Of course, I'm going to run GNU software on it. That's the whole point of running UNIX, the GNU software. Killer apps like the X server(s), Emacs, ftp/web/dns servers and virtually any other software you could ever imagine. I'm running UNIX (or clones) to run the GNU software.

      I'm curious, does anyone else share this view ?

      --
      Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
      Aristotele
    2. Re:UNIX matters by AstroDrabb · · Score: 4, Interesting
      UNIX is the actual operating system (which Linux has made a very powerful and capable clone of). It could be OS X, Solaris, AIX, *BSD or whatever.
      The thing is, is that Max OS X and *BSD are not UNIX. If you look at that list, according to the Open Group, the only recent OSes that are _true_ Unix and allowed to be called UNIX are Sun Solaris, IBM AIX and Compaq Tru64. So if you need a true Unix, these are your only choices. However, for me and probably many others, if you need close-to-Unix, then Linux, *BSD and even Mac OS X are very, very close and will do the job very well if not better then the current _true_ UNIX system out there. I don't think that the Unix name will be that important in a few years. Linux, Mac OS X and *BSD have a name already in the IT market. What would getting Linux, Mac OS X or *BSD Unix certified do for them?

      I do agree with you though about the GNU software. That is what makes a good Linux/*BSD system.

      --
      If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
      it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
  8. Close enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For the amiga's design purposes, it was pretty close to unix. It was intended to be a single-user system, so obviously, it didn't have all of unix's multi-user/network stuff. But it had true multitasking including it's own form of task prioritisation, pipes, similar commands, dynamic libraries, a powerful scriptable shell, etc.

    Sure, it wasn't unix technically speaking. However, if you allow a certain 'artistic license' like we do for OS X, and add in a 'handicap' since this was a 16-bit 7Mhz machine usually with 1MB RAM or less, we can start to see just what AmigaOS was. IMHO, it was closer to a personal version of GUI-enabled Unix than OS X has managed yet. Technology has moved on, but I still miss the productivity I had on AmigaOS.

  9. What Happened to Apple's UNIX lawsuit? by HighOrbit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Last year the Open Group sued Apple because Apple was advertising OSX as a "UNIX". This was reported on slashdot here. Apparently Apple had originally licenced the trademark, but had stopped paying fees and the licence lasped. Apple contended that "UNIX" is now a generic term and that they shouldn't have to pay to licence it. The Open Group, of course, felt compelled to defend their cash-cow trademark, so they lauched a lawsuit.

    So, where is this now? I did a search but even the mighty power of Google can't seem to find any reference to the outcome or status of the case. Does anybody know what the status of this case is? Was it settled, or just languishing on the court's docket?