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

I think its a major achievement

[DogcowX]

There aren't many members of that club (IBM, HP, Sun)

Re:I think its a major achievement

[krgallagher]

"There aren't many members of that club (IBM, HP, Sun)"

Yeah that was my reaction. I checked on the site to see the list of other certified OS'. Here it is:

• Apple Inc.: Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard on Intel-based Macintosh computers
• Fujitsu Limited: Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System on Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER® 64-bit SPARC® Based Platforms
• Hewlett-Packard Company: HP-UX 11i V3 Release B.11.31 or later on HP Integrity Servers
• IBM Corporation: AIX 5L for POWER V5.3 dated 7-2006 or later
• IBM Corporation: AIX 5L for POWER V5.2 dated 8-2004 or later with APARs: IY59610, IY60869, IY61405 with VAC 6.0.0.8 or later on pSeries CHRP systems
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System plus patch 118844-06 for X86 and on, on 64-bit X86 based systems
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System and on, on 32-bit X86 based systems
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System and on, on 32-bit and 64-bit SPARC based systems

There is no Linux. The only BSD up there is OS X. Apparently even Unix isn't Unix. It looks to me like 'THE Open GROUP' is a PR firm for Sun and IBM.

Linux, BSD and Unix certification

[Savage-Rabbit]

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. A Unix certification is a bit more than a moniker. It means that the level of software portability between Unix 03 compliant systems is guaranteed to be very high. That may not be important to you but to companies/corporations seeking to reduce costs and development times and to achieve the maximum level of reliability and portability in their business critical software a Unix 03 certification has meaning. Also keep in mind that although no linux or BSD flavor other than OS X has gone for actual certification apparently many Linux distributions for example still make sure they are more or less Unix compliant and they do it using Open Group test suites. So even if no Linux distro has officially applied for certification it looks to me as if they are keeping their options open.