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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,"
can Unix ever be *nix?
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Seriously, for all practical purposes, GNU + Linux is setting the trend now. Ask IBM, Novell, SCO
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 /).
Qui ne va pas à la chasse n'a pas de gibier
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GNU = GNU's Not UNIX...
:p
Have to change that to say GIU Is UNIX
Can GNU ever be unix?
I don't know. Maybe we should just ask SCO. They would probably have a reasonable opinion.
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If it's "close enough", surely big business are going to do more research than just look at whether it's been certified by The Open Group just so the Linux community can use its trademark?
The problem, as well, is what to certify. There are so many combinations of kernel, drivers, libc, userspace utilities and windowing systems that any certificate could well be rendered useless.
For example, if IBM paid for SuSE to get certified, would that apply to RHEL or Debian, if they were using slightly different kernel versions or different kernel patches as is often the case?
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
I suppose that if a certification were awarded, the acronym could be changed to "GNU's Now Unix." :-)
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?
But, the BSDs, and I believe even Solaris and AIX have a Linux compatability layer, or at the very least, "the GNU toolset", GCC, glibc, etc. Of course you wont beable to run IA32 binaries on a UltraSPARC, regardless of the compatability layer, but you could run IA32/Linux stuff on IA32/*BSD, or SparcLinux stuff on a Solaris box.
I guess Im trying to say, given that lots of things can run Linux binaries, can cleanly compile Linux targeted sources, Linux + GCC + glibc may be a better standard to target then POSIX and whatnot. It is definitly more modern. Or to put things another way, UNIX is irrelevent, the question shoud be: can UNIXes ever be Linux?
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.
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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.
GNU/Linux seems to be evolving as its own standard
And this standard is called LSB.
Its just for 'brand recognition' anyway, and Linux has that now.
If you say 'Linux' to the general IT population, they already know what you are talking about. ( and they also realize the differences beteeen it and 'unix' ) so why muddy the waters?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
When GNU is Unix, LAME must be an MP3 encoder and WINE must be an emulator.
- Save a tree, eat more woodpeckers
Meanwhile, commercial Unix vendors are going out of their way to achieve Linux compatibility, at either the source or binary level. Linux is quickly becoming the standard to which other Unices are compared. This means two things:
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Hurd is definitely a good idea, but so far it is only that: an idea.
I have been hearing about Hurd at least since 1992 or so, ever since Linus started his project. This is 12 years now, and nothing concrete has come up yet, that can be adopted by the masses.
Don't get me wrong, I like many of the ideas and design decisions they have. But my gripe is that their model does not allow hordes of programmers to join in and get things out faster, like the Linux model.
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Is the branding alive or not?
What Unix passes Unix 2003? OK. Who passed UNIX 98? Get the picture? Its going to cost ~$0.5M when all said and done. What advantage is there? Some of the 'UNIX' systems out there have not passed a checklist in over a decade.
Linux does not need people who dont code deciding what is right and wrong in expensive ongoing beurocratic processes. Things are decided much faster in open forums which document the process in ample detail.
Linux does deviate but given a coin toss, it goes with the previous 'standards.' If the legacy means does not make sense, its ignored and documented.
The UNIX branding made sense with legacy closed source Unix systems. It provided a level of trust that customers could drop to without even (imagine!) seeing the underlying code.
It was a bandaid on a broken model. The outdated Unix systems deviated but the customer could only read documentation, not code.
So systems like Solaris, AIX, HP-UX
If they decide to open up the process, they have to decide wether to join open source projects or try to replicate the efforts.
'UNIX' is dead. Do we need a netcraft survey?
I know people are going to say that wont work. "Look at all the forks in apache and perl and python. It will be anarchy."
Thats proven to not be the case. The problem has always been closed source.
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
My first reaction was: "Why the heck should Linux be Unix-certified? With increasing popularity, Unix will soon have to be Linux-certified if it wants to get any kind of market acceptance."
Well, as amusing as it may be, this thought is flawed. First of all Linux is merely the kernel; it's not even glibc, nor any other GNU tools, or third party packages. BSDs are Unix-like OS, just like Linux(-distros) are Unix-like. Solaris is also _a_ Unix-like OS, just like HP-UX.
Actually Unix has become a generic term which refers to all kind of kernels that expose a POSIX (don't remember the exact number) interface to userland applications. Any kernel (or microkernel + servers) that implements this interface, can be justly called Unix (or at least Unix-like; so as to not feed SCOundrel or Open Group lawyers).
The really interesting thing about the hype around Linux, is when we will move on and replace the Linux kernel with something totally different (be it microkernelized, or whatever). Then, we won't have just a GNU/Linux system anymore, but, say, also a GNU/Hurd/L4, GNU/Hurd/Mach or GNU/BSD, BSD/Linux, BSD/Hurd/*, ... system
(terminology being
"OS personality"/"OS servers"/"microkernel"
or "OS personality"/"monolithic kernel").
It seems silly to use the kernel name only as a brand for all kind of Unix-oid systems, regardless of them using the Linux kernel or something else; but providing the POSIX Unix interface.
To wrap it up: it's just a matter of names and brands. As other posters have commented before, Linux has gained enough popularity and visibility. It doesn't need to be certified to be successful!
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