Mac OS X Leopard is Now Officially Unix

An anonymous reader writes "Mac OS X Leopard is now officially Unix, according to the Opengroup." I know everyone out there was really worried about this one. Welcome to the August news vacuum!

Comments

Good for them

[ceeam]

Now can we have POSIX specs publically available (free)?

If it meant anything

[mjgraham]

If UNIX meant more than real world UNIX Compatibility, there's now an easily usable, affordable real UNIX on the market - is the jist of the news. For the few organisations that demand real UNIX this could be in Apple's favour. Yes, the hardware may be crappy, but admin costs would be lower. Or not. Either way the Pointy-haired bosses of the world will be all over it, so many admins will have no choice.

Re:Money is taken away from the idiots

[ThosLives]

It's not about the 'name' it's about what the certificate represents: Compliance with a specified set of tests.

That's actually very valuable and it isn't just the name, because it means that if you have an application that relies on the functionality proven by those tests, then you're good.

That's the whole point of standards and standardizing bodies. You want a gallon to be a gallon (US or UK, just be consistent!), a kilogram to be a kilogram, a UNIX to be a UNIX. Testing isn't free, so instead of relying on volunteers to do testing it looks like IBM, Apple, Sun, HP, and Fujitsu paid some guys calling themselves the Open Group to do some verification and certify that some standards are met. I don't see a lot of controversy there.

Re:I think its a major achievement

[ericrost]

Linux isn't UNIX for cost reasons. UNIX is a copyrighted compatibility certification. It costs a lot of money to get that moniker, and it really doesn't mean anything in these days of Linux and BSD.

Linux is Linux, it doesn't NEED to be UNIX.

Re:Dumb questions

[david.emery]

I think the more accurate statement is that Leopard is the first one that -passed- certification.

          dave