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IBM First To Receive UNIX 2003 Certification
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?"
I thought it was always strictly a UNIX® thang that was never important to the noncommercial BSDs, Linux, or OS X. That doesn't mean it isn't important to the markets that still rely on it for interoperability.
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IIRC, the orginal idea behind the UNIX trademark being given to the Open Group was so they would "protect" the UNIX name by making sure that anything calling itself "UNIX" would have to meet certain inter-operability standards. You could only license the UNIX(TM) name if your product met some strict standards.
That *would* have been a GOOD THING(TM). The problem is they charge mega-$$$ for certification and license royalties. They charge much much more than their costs and reap a huge profit on each certification. This basically freezes out any free/open unix-like system and it also is a barrier to entry for a start-up who would otherwise meet the standard. With a little work, there are few reasons why FreeBSD (for instance) would not be able to meet the standard, but that would require mega-bucks to be handed over to the Open Group and few open source project have that kind of money.
Cheers to IBM for meeting the standard. Jeers to Open Group for being a bunch of greedy bastards and locking out Free Software.