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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?"
Can this decision be related to the recent fact that IBM agreed to reduce dire working conditions (at least for some) workers?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
This is the most regular first post ever: First post.
I recieved this news when I opened slashdot web page.
Please don't vote Too many uninformed people will be voting this year.
IBM is rivaling Microsoft's uncany knack for aligning their company with revelant dates.
Receive \Re*ceive"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Received}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Receiving}.] [OF. receiver, recevoir, F. recevoir, fr. L. recipere; pref. re- re- + capere to take, seize. See See {Capable}, {Heave}, and cf. {Receipt}, {Reception}, {Recipe}.] 1. To take, as something that is offered, given, committed, sent, paid, or the like; to accept; as, to receive money offered in payment of a debt; to receive a gift, a message, or a letter.
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.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
IBM had to turn down the certification because they couldn't find the relevant code.
Unix 2003? I wonder who will come up with Linux 2004 and lead the way :P
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?"
Companies and groups that are truly interested in standards will care and require it. Unfortunately all Linux distributions and BSD projects are not even close to being a Unix certified product. And the BSD families are much closer than Linux.
MacOSX could be with some cash (which they have lots of) but their target markets aren't hardcore techies, it's graphic designers and iPod buyers.
I think this picture explains it adequately. ;-)
that this standard is called Unix 2003, and now (towards the end of 2004) there is exactly one system which is certified. Compare to the rest of the software world... :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Not exactly a selling point for either, eh?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
... and still no SCO jokes.
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.
You have to pay big $$$ to be evaluated by the standards group.
I'm sure any open-source unix project with that kind of money has better ways to spend it.
Unix Tournament 2003?
All these corporate suits and devils and penguins, running around w/ rocket launchers and sniper rifles. Deathmatch, maybe some capture the flag -- it could work...
-- I could tell right away that she was impressed with my HUGE Slashdot Karma.
The real question is how much this certification matters, if it appears it doesn't co-exist with POSIX standards.
As discussed on comp.unix.solaris a few days ago - POSIX specifies (amongst many other things) what various flags passed to uname should produce. AIX (which my collegues and I always referred to as "Aix Ain't Unix" due to it's...ahem...'unique' approach to things) breaks this. So it shouldn't pass strict POSIX conformance testing, yet it passes UNIX03. So, what does this cert mean in reality, given that AIX is one of the most "non-Unixy" systems around anyway ? Who is really going to go for AIX over HP-UX or Solaris just because AIX got a cert ?
So now we know. It's all because of these damn foreigners. Honestly, you can't accept the fact that Americans can write buggy software too, do you?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
you know its a slow news day when the article starts with "Last Wednesday..." -jordan
Why did Darl McBride cross the road?
Because his code had been misappropriated into the chicken which was now on the other side.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
BSD is a true Unix, so applying for the certification is reasonable, but wasn't Linux (or its predecessor Minix) a Unix-clone ? It can be POSIX-certified, but Unix-certified is a bit stretching the truth ? That's similar to a street bootlegger asking Louis Vuitton's Paris headquarters to certify their $15 LV bags for "authenticity."
Wow. That's a "cute" but pointless comment. You did not even address the points in the grandparent article.
Are you an Indian bigot?
When all workers communicate in only 1 language (i.e. English), is the working environment more productive than the environment where there is a tower of babel? Is a worker who is fluent in English better able to write English documentation than a worker who speaks Mandarin and barely a word of English? You tell me, bigot.
ps -u root
That's been a part of POSIX since 1988. Even SCO
gets this one right.
Come back and discuss things again after you've
fixed the blatent and willfull standard violations.
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.
I like this particular piece of crap:
SunOS when it was first upgraded to 64 bits (becoming Solaris)
Complete and utter bullshit. One of the biggest IBM research centers is in the german speaking bit of Switherland. Even as far back as 1995 and the OS2 Warp release development work was done in places like Bulgaria, Russia, Chech republic. Another large development center which deals with non-right-to-left writing direction languages is Egypt. None of these are natively english speaking. In fact IBM has been closing research facilities in English speaking countries (England) in favour of non-english speaking countries for more then 10 years.
You have got the wroing impression because IBM is a company that it is extremely strict on requiring every employee to know and use English for internal correspondence and documentation. But it is not an US company at all. In fact Sun is considerably more US. To be more exact it is a combination of Californian Silicon Valley "we are better then everyone" with typical college dropout vindictiveness. DNS, paying SCO, kicking Red Hat under the table, so on so fourth. To summarize - Sun is typical international corporation - it is present around the world, with nearly all directors and administrative personnel of any noticeable influence being American. IBM is and has been trully global for a very long time. At least as far back as the age of typewriters (and the Nazi affair).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
That SCO, the self purported "owners of the UNIX operating system," are behind IBM in meeting the latest UNIX standards.
> Are you an Indian bigot?
Hmmm, who is bigotted?
You might not be aware of it, but there are ways to get around communication issues. All that is needed is to think about the problem and setup procedures to enhance communication. Most likely, the biggest communication hurdle is not language in general, but different office locations, especially when the timezones are far apart.
Did you realize that those failures you described are first of all management failures rushing far from mature product to the market ? And the management is rarely consisting of H-1B visa holders, just the opposite - they are all Americans.
I am from the former Eastern Bloc and I was working for an outsourcing company for a while (for a German partner). The amounts of craptacular code written by supposedly superior Western programmers (and American too - one of the largest US jeans makers is using our software to design and cut jeans) were something incredible. So stop this elitist and xenophobic bullshit, please.
If you are unable to compete, either on salary or more like on quality terms, well, tough for you. Either adapt or die. It is the same for us, because the Indians and Chinese have even lower salaries than former Easterners. However, we are not whining and crying in a corner that those H-1Bs took our jobs, we are trying to outcompete them on things they cannot do. Try to do the same instead of this crap, OK ? Capitalism works both ways, you know.
Regards, jan
You Both Right and Wrong.
Right - BSD is a genuine descendant of the original AT&T Unix. It is a Unix in everything but name. Linux is a completely new clone
The wrong part is about what it takes to be a brand-name UNIX(TM). No descent from AT&T Unix is required and no code simularity is required. The only requirement is that the system meet certain inter-operability standards that are defined in the Unix Specification from Open Group. So a completely new clone like Linux could (theoretically) meet the standard, get certified, and call itself UNIX(TM).
Apple did get it's old Unix-for-Mac product "A/UX" certified as a real Unix. But for a long time Apple described Mac OS X as "Unix-like", later it used the term "Unix based" technology. The Open Group filed a lawsuit against Apple for using this terminology back in 2001 and this was still winding its way through the court and negotiation system as late as June 2004. I have no idea what the state of things is today, but Apple got very nasty during these "negotiations" claiming that the word Unix itself doesn't denote a strict set of standards. At some point people were talking about Apple having to pay huge fines or the Open Group losing the use of Unix as a trademark as the only two outcomes of this trial.
Whatever happened, I doubt Apple will go after the certification of Unix 2003.
Gone are the days with 2-3 news items regarding SCO.
We're now talking about two entirely different things:
- Ethnicity/culture/language (they're tightly intertwined)
- Location
They both have issues. My coworkers are spread over the entire N.American continent, plus Germany and India. At least, these are the ones I deal with on a regular basis.In my experience, location is a larger barrier to effective communication, if only because turn-around time when emailing with India from here (11.5 hours difference from MDT to at least their location in India) is so long that it takes forever to realise that there was a misunderstanding.
And then ethnicity/culture/language (here I refer to a person's "mother tongue") can incredibly multiple that time zone problem. Then again, so can attitude. I have native Chinese people working with me - those who have a positive attitude about trying to learn English and communicating effectively (and looking like they can communicate at a native-speaker's adult level in email) are much better than those who have no interest in improving their communication. (Guess which one is in management.)
Short version: yes, you can get around communication issues. But most of us want to concentrate on the work at hand, not on communication. ;-)
I recall some time back IBM made a little bit of noise about how technically OS/400 could be branded as a UNIX because it provided enough of the required APIs in the specification, but chose not to do it because it would cause confusion in the marketplace. (Although, following that line of logic, it doesn't seem reasonable that MVS has a UNIX personality when OS/400 doesn't).
Now IBM's "lost AIX source code" makes sense: they actually pulled off, at the Unix Certification, the old fantasy of "the dog ate my homework"!
--
make install -not war
Are you a bigot?
I, nor anyone else, would expect an IBM subsidiary located in Germany to be chock full of English speakers. What I do expect is that IBM-Germany should be chock full of German speakers. They should be writing all documentation in German. (There may be some translation to English when the product is redeployed to, say, France.)
What I do expect is that IBM-USA should be chock full of English speakers writing all documentation in English.
If IBM-Germany hired all sorts of H-1B equivalents, bloating the workforce with Indians, Chinese, and anyone else who could not speak German fluently, then IBM-Germany would have a tower of babel. The quality of its software would degrade to the level of Sun-USA.
If IBM-USA hired all sorts of H-1B equivalents, bloating the workforce with Indians, Chinese, and anyone else who could not speak English fluently, then IBM-USA would have a tower of babel. The quality of its software would degrade to the level of Sun-USA.
Being typical of a bigot, you present "evidence" that is not evidence at all. A big IBM research center in german-speaking Switzerland would definitely not be speaking English. That center, in order to function properly, would be chock full of speakers of the native language (or languages) of Switzerland.
Are you an Indian bigot? You sound like one.
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.
Are you on crack?
Solaris 1.x was SunOS 4 (BSD derived)+ OpenWindows; Solaris 2.x was SunOS 5 (SysV derived) + OpenWindows. Both were 32 bit operating systems running on 32 bit hardware (ignoring things like large file support), until UltraSPARC hardware came along and Solaris 7/2.7 added support for 64 bit operation in 1998 (this is 7 years after Solaris 1.0 shipped, and 6 years after Solaris 2.0 shipped).
Your post is factually inaccurate, bigoted, etc.
...actually has got a C2 certification, with help from IBM. As such, the German distribution is the only one that can legally be used by the US DoD. Ok, so the invasion takes place 50 years later than planned. What's a bit of transatlantic lag?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Linux may not have the "Unix 2003 standard" label, but Linux Weekly News reports that Linus has now declared a pre-patch release naming standard! After the confusion surrounding the 2.6.9 pre-patch naming conventions, Linus has created an important Standards Document outlining the new naming policy. In honor of this event, Linux kernels will now be entitled "Woozy Numbat".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Fair enough criticism, but how would you propose that these certifying groups be supported?
Taxes? Bake sales? Fund-raising drives?
Nonetheless, the benefit is stability. Slow, methodical processes tend to result in reliable, stable products.
Yep, the process worked perfectly for NASA! Nothing ever goes wrong with the Space Shuttle or the unmanned Mars missions!
Oh wait...
SunOS when it was first upgraded to 64 bits (becoming Solaris)
Indeed, SunOS became Solaris when Sun abandoned BSD in favour of SVR4. Solaris 7 was the first 64 version. As any fule kno.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
Half right. It has nothing to do with the nationality, national origin, or immigration status of employees. It has a lot to do with what is expected of employees, and what processes are involved in writing software.
I worked for some years for one of IBM's competitors. I wasn't a tech writer there, but looked into it before joining. The software development process involved working closely with the writers. The programmer's job, in essence, was to make it work according to the documentation, not the other way around. The relaese cycle was slow, but it was industrial strength code. Something I miss today.
Oddly, it seems to me that most of the tech writers working around here nowadays -- in English -- are not native speakers. Most are Russian. They take care with the language that a native usually misses. But they're not programmers. It's a rare programmer who can write decent text.
No reason why it cannot be again. No point cost is the problem linux is developing to quickly at the moment. Ie by the time certified version is created by linux standards it is out dated. Note BSD have the same problem UNIX Certified cannot handle a rapidly upgrading os where the kernel is being changed every day of the week leading to monthly versions. Maybe kernel version 2.8 when Linus has ran out of features to add to the linux kernel Certified would be the only missing feature then it might happen.
Unix Certified has nothing to do with the history of the OS. All it is that a OS meets a partical standard and style of interfaces for cross compad between all unixes. Note Microsoft could apply for UNIX Certified Windows XP if it was number one truely UNIX compad and number two Windows XP pasted the flaw test.(There is no reson why windows does not have it other than Microsoft software not being up to scrach because XP is based on a UNIX made a long time ago)
Unix Certificed cause companys to get into so many month upgrade systems on there source code.
Who cares. If it walks like UNIX, quacks like UNIX, and doesn't have brain numbing header bugs like those from unix, then it's perhaps unix. Unless it's from microsoft in which case it's a foonix.
(not phoenix.)
But none of this confusion for the big guys would have happened if Richard Stallman hadn't been sufficiently pig headed to believe he could tilt at windmills. Yeah verily Richard, you rock!
Sadly, just like Arthur Clarke, he'll never make money out of that..
I think this bothers him, like totally obviously, it bothers him *NOT AT ALL*
I am equally unperturbed. There are more interesting things, like "are the collared doves as sentient as the feral pidgeons". So far, my research says no. (and one day I'll spell the birds designation accurately).
But they are nice people. With true stories to tell. Which is more than anyone from SCO can say...
(Quick observation which isn't in wikipedia - Collared doves have colour shifting plumage - they are not just boringly beige coloured. So, depending on the light, the colour you see changes.
Second observation: most people (except those who spend time hand feeding them) don't know that they have a flash *orange* patch just on the nape of the neck).
No, I'm not in a sexual liasion with a collared dove...
Cheers from Athens Greece.
So, if IBM is really embracing Linux, why spend the time and money to certify AIX. They could have spent it on Linux development. Doesn't the certification devalue Linux a bit by comparison?
How about "cost recovery".
As opposed to "huge profit", that is.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
what do I miss?
- Hubert
I agree. Charging enough to cover the cost of administrating the certification and of developing the test suite would be good stewardship of the UNIX trademark. Raising prices so high that only large corporations can afford to license the trademark is simply not good stewardship.
Remember the original idea was to license the trademark to systems that could meet the Single Unix Specification and thereby protect the UNIX name. Now the idea seems to be to squeeze as much licensing royalties out of the software industry as posible.
Woopy-doo. I couldn't care less. Who gives a flying burrito? Irrelevant. Redundant. Pointless and expensive. Either blow it out of, or jam it out of, your bottom. Bollocks. Wake me up for the next reel.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
as an American I want to say two things--firstly, I agree 100% with you. Secondly, I don't think _most_ Americans are xenophobic.
But anyway, right on with your messages--I enjoyed your point.
I am not American, neither H-1B visa holder and with such xenophobic attitude I will definitely not look for one.
The post you replied to was an obvious troll. It was comprised of almost entirely factual errors. Even so, you took your opportunity to claim that Americans are xenophobic. You might want to examine your own biases.
That would be a real achievement worth noting. Will AIX ever be LSB compliant? Or, will IBM just switch to Linux completely? For now, its just another check off for governmental procurement requirements. So, it is more of an asthetic label than something with substance.
How exactly do you jam something out? The new Unix certification clearly indicates that "jam" refers to a process whereby an object is tightly wedged into, and not out of, a bottom type architecture. Thus we jam things into, or even jam it up your bottom, and never out of a bottom. This message brought to you by the group that had OSF-DCE RPC jammed by a company known as Microsoft
I'd have expected a syntax error actually, but in
any case, FreeBSD is wrong. This is an intentional
and major violation of the POSIX standard.
Simply put, FreeBSD uses -u for something else.
It's used to get the 11-column "user" format.
For 16 years now, POSIX has specified that -u will
let you select a user. So user phil can ask to see
all processes owned by user barry.
FreeBSD makes you use grep. Eeew! Don't forget
the "^", or you'll match command names too.
a la Multics. MS made a big deal out of C2 certification and politely forgot to point out that the only way they got it was to pull the network connection. Hey, this is the real world. B0 and seriously radiation hardened secure stuff *still* means our old friend Multics. (Which I personally liked even though our university ticked off everybody by busting the budget with their dual processor Honeywell c.a. 1980). If you really want a laugh imagine the comments from the science depts when the CS dept burns *everything* on such a nice box (no fortran compiler? eh?). The truth
was that even in those days the IT bimbos didn't grok the real (engineering) world...
Personally, I roll about the floor laughing every time MS tries to pretend it has a secure system.
If they ripped it down to the basics and made it open source we'd actually *fix* their problems for them. (OK, this isn't a joke). Someone poke Steve B with an umbrella (any Bulgarians at MS?)
You perhaps think that the MAC OS is still stuck back in the 68K days of handles and memory managers on machines with no MMU. No sir. OS X *is* a BSD unix, with all of Apple's gorgeous stuff running in user land. Anyways, UNIX goes back to Ken Thompson's
playfulness on a spare minicomputer c.a. 1969 so what are you trying to suggest? Maybe I'm just senile.
OK, GA GA GA.
Je Men Foo
I would never ever blame any engineers for bad code. No American company takes any responsibility for putting engineers in a position to code properly. Schedules are always too tight, money and resource is always a joke.
Western programmers and engineers have had to carry the load for management, HR and sales department in every company that came within 2 feet of me. I think the East is just starting to see the swing of things.
Decent page viewer, modern version of top and other utilities are overdue too...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.