Slashdot Mirror
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?"
IBM is rivaling Microsoft's uncany knack for aligning their company with revelant dates.
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.
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.
That'll be tough. The "Distros" can't even decide on what files to put in what directories ("Does that go in
And, besides, Linux is just the kernel.
Trolling is a art,
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.
That'll be tough. The "Distros" can't even decide on what files to put in what directories [...]
There is a standard on that.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
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 ?
you know its a slow news day when the article starts with "Last Wednesday..." -jordan
Well... The results themselves are the best joke as they have neither 2003, nor 1998. In fact the only cert they hold is 1995 so they do not have a product that is legally entitled to be called Unix(R) according to the current specification and Open Group requirements (2003 is next spec, 1998 is current, 1995 is obsolete).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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.
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.
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/
The curious thing about the argument regarding IBM is that it avoided the fact that many Americans are not fluent in English, and that IBM apparently must hire only the subset of Americans who are fluent in English. If they don't, and, in reality, they actually hire Americans with a broad spectrum of English proficiency, then the argument defending IBM is moot.
I've worked with Americans my whole life (being an in the USA and all), and, truly, many, if not a majority, of Americans act as if they had just learned their ABCs. It is quite depressing having to read problem reports or e-mails that look like they were written by second graders.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
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.
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
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.
Linux should follow Unix standards, and this is rather important since the Unix standards tend to be designed to assure source compatability, that the base libraries, kernel, and environment follow the same standards so that software and application libraries can compile on any Unix-compliant OS with no modification. This is essential to having true OS choice because if you want to switch OSs its nice to be able to take your applications with you. Furthermore, since it allows the same software to be compiled on different OSs, all Unix OSs can co-exist and benefit from the software written for each other, so each OS doesnt have to have a set of applications rewritten for it, which wastes time. Linux shouldnt have the "take over the world" mentality and realise that people do deserve OS choice and thus support standards to allow people to move freely between Linux and other Unix OSs.
...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)
Fair enough criticism, but how would you propose that these certifying groups be supported?
Taxes? Bake sales? Fund-raising drives?
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.
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?
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.