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IBM First To Receive UNIX 2003 Certification

Posted by timothy on from the gave-a-party-and-nobody-came dept.

Hobart writes "Last Wednesday, IBM's AIX was the first to receive the UNIX 2003 certification from The Open Group, beating out Sun, HP, SCO and the rest. No mention anywhere in the branded products register of any Linux/BSD distribution, or Mac OS X. Are any companies still developing software to this certification, or requiring it?"

1 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Better Working Conditions - More Stable Software by reporter · · Score: -1, Flamebait
    IBM differs from Sun Microsystems. The former has a traditional working environment, and most of the workers are Americans (since IBM traditionally resists hiring H-1Bs without a Ph.D.). The language of communication among these workers is English, and the workers are skilled at documentation since English is their first language. Whenever a team makes a change in the software, an engineer thoroughly documents the change in a paper (now PDF) document. The "negative" in this scenario is that the pace of change in AIX is slow. When you document each implementation of a change in AIX before proceeding to implementing the next change, you tend to slow the pace of changes. Accusations that upgrades to AIX are slow are accurate.

    Nonetheless, the benefit is stability. Slow, methodical processes tend to result in reliable, stable products.

    By contrast, at Sun Microsystem, more than 50% of the employees are current or former H-1Bs. There is no common language of communication. There is minimal documentation. Each employee rushes to the next implementation while the Chinese (including Taiwanese and Hong Kong) manager breathes down her neck.

    If you go back to old articles about SunOS when it was first upgraded to 64 bits (becoming Solaris), you will find plenty of articles describing the flaws and the lack of stability in the product. Over time, Sun removed enough of the bugs so that the product is about as stable as AIX. Yet, the customers who bought Solaris when it first appeared on the market paid the price of the mismanagement within Sun.

    Similar comments apply to Microsoft. About 30% of its workforce is current or former H-1Bs. Look at how unstable MS-DOS and Windows 95/98 is.

    IBM likely was the first to receive the UNIX certification because AIX is simply the most stable and reliable version of UNIX.