Not really, the article is quite specifically talking about Unix. Linux and iOS and OSX are not Unix.
Mac OS X is UNIX. iOS and Linux are not.
The micro-kernel is not unix and the userland came from Unix.
As did the BSD part of the kernel (the kernel is more than "the micro-kernel"; "the micro-kernel" is the stuff in the osfmk directory of the XNU source, the BSD part is the stuff in the bsd directory, and there's also I/O Kit in the iokit directory).
It is unix-like, it is not unix.
The BSD part of the kernel, and much of the Darwin userland, is as much "unix", in the sense of being derived from AT&T code, as are the *BSDs. (It's also "unix" in the sense of passing the Single UNIX Specification test suite, but you presumably already knew that and weren't using "unix" in that sense.)
CISC has been RISC with a translation layer from the very beginning.
Or kinda sorta VLIW, if you mean "CISC has been implemented in microcode atop not-so-CISCy microengines from the very beginning", although it's also been implemented purely in hardware (in, for example, the IBM System/360 Model 75, the GE 600 series, and the Honeywell 6000 series, although that was in an era before the term "CISC" had been coined).
But all that matters is that once you try to port the system to another architecture, you end up with an inappropriate api model and a legacy of language and system design choices that were done in a different decade, for very different needs, and for completely different capabilities.
Or, if you're just talking about instruction set architectures, you end up with an operating system whose API model works Just Fine for both instruction set architectures (and ISAs other than the one ported from or the one ported to) and a legacy of language and system design choices that work Well Enough for both.
So presumably you're referring to system architectures, not instruction set architectures such as SPARC, MIPS, POWER/PowerPC/Power ISA, Alpha, and x86, as they really don't differ, at least in the way Windows or UN*X use them, in ways that make much of a difference.
OS X meets v4 for command line tools, but only v2 for the C API.
Same for Solaris 11, same for AIX 6, same for HP-UX 11i V3. Does this indicate that those OSes have not adopted any of the subsequent API changes, or does it indicate that the Open Group haven't updated their conformance suites so that you can't test anything better than v4 for the command-line tools and v2 for the C API?
(And do "V4" and "V2" refer to Issues 4 and 2, respectively, of the SUS, or do they refer to something else?)
The *BSDs and Linux are light years ahead of OS X's C API.
What are some of the significant things present in the C APIs of Linux and the *BSDs that are not present in the C API of OS X, and which, if any, of them were introduced in issues of the SUS later than 2?
Apple in general appears to be giving up on Unix. They've deprecated much of the Unix API in iOS, including simple things like fork(), and have stated that they want to move all application developers, including desktop app developers, to the iOS API.
Where have they stated that (in a way indicating that "all" includes not only the folks writing Mac Applications(TM) but also the people doing UN*X apps that work on OS X)?
It's true that all the UNIX companies are either dead (Sun, Intergraph, SGI)
One of these things is not like the others, given that Oracle bought Sun and are still selling their servers and their Unix. (SGI's still around, too, but good luck buying a MIPS-based server running IRIX from them.)
Depends on how you define Unix. OSX/iOS are based on FreeBSD & NetBSD. If you're talking about official, formal Unix OS's, neither Linux, the *BSDs or OSX would count as none of them are entitled to use the Unix trademark
To reuse an analogy from above, that's like claiming that all the quacking waterfowl that seem to like being fed bread in the park are not "certified Ducks(R)" because because the man from The Duck(R) Group(TM) has not been paid to come along and certifiy the ducks.
Well, in fact, legally speaking, they're not Duck(R) waterfowl. The point is that, given that they walk enough like a Duck(R) waterfowl, and quack enough like a Duck(R) waterfowl, people are willing to treat them the same way they treat Duck(R) waterfowl even though they cannot legally be called Duck(R) waterfowl. (I.e., people are willing to use Linux distributions as a substitute for Unix(R) systems because, legally speaking, even though they're not Unix(R) systems, they're enough like it that the differences aren't worth spending the extra money for a Unix(R) system.)
The other reason to not care is that the duck certificiation man is not, in fact, an ornithologist and would happily certify a goose as a Duck(R)(TM).
Well, yeah, I suspect most sites with Unix applications - oops, sorry, that's "applications for Unix(R) systems":-) - are probably not going to port them to z/OS (the certification for which is for a standard that's almost 20 years old, BTW; are there any geese that have been certified as a recent version of a Duck(R)? The only recent Ducks(R) I see are all stuff that could reasonably be considered Real Unix), given that if their apps assume they're using ASCII, they're in for a rude surprise....
In the "dead" list, given that DEC^WCompaq^HP aren't coming out with new releases and given that it runs on an instruction set architecture of which no more implementations are being made and it isn't being ported to new architectures.
Irix?
In the "dead" list, given that SGI aren't coming out with new releases and given that the only instruction set it supports these days, MIPS is now targeted for various flavors of embedded computing rather than general-purpose computing, and it's not being ported to other instruction sets.
To boot IBM now lets one run Linux on mainframe class hardware (the Z system). Actually the interesting trick is IBM in the mainframe line has run microcoded machines since at least the 370 line.
Since the 360 line - all but the Model 75 and Models 91, 95, and 195 were microcoded.
As a result to get a new architecture, you just write new microcode.
You could add new instructions with new microcode, but you aren't going to get Shiny Newer Faster Machines (at least not past a certain point) with new microcode on top of the Same Old Boring Hardware, and, with Shiny Newer Faster Hardware, you're going to need Shiny Newer Microcode to run atop that hardware to implement the instruction set. (And, with recent generations of hardware, most of the instructions are, I think, implemented in hardware, with some instructions implemented by trapping to PALcode^Wmillicode.)
No, Linux not a UNIX It doesn't pass the POSIX standards to get the UNIX trademark, and it never will (due to some significant architectural difference in the kernel and the resulting libc.)
Which specific parts of the Single UNIX Standard cannot possibly be implemented by Linux+glibc due to those architectural differences? Be specific, please.
Solaris originally added some System V enhancements to SunOS, but did not change it from BSD.
You're thinking of SunOS 3.2-3.5 and 4.x; the first SVisms were added in 3.2, and a bunch more were added in 4.0 (and RFS was added in, I think, 4.1). The "Solaris" name wasn't used until SunOS 4.1.1 (Solaris 1 = SunOS 4.1.1 + the corresponding versions of OpenWindows and maybe the desktop applications) and SunOS 5.0 (Solaris 2 = SunOS 5.0 + the corresponding versions of OpenWIndows and desktop applications).
As Solaris progressed more and more System V was implemented and added
SunOS 5.0 was Sun's version of System V Release 4. SVR4 was the result of AT&T and Sun combining the SV code base with the Sun code base, with a bunch of things (such as the VM subsystem) picked up from SunOS 4 with some changes (one of the most important VM subsystem changes was the renaming of the routine to look for an unmapped region in the address space from as_hole() to as_gap(); yes, I'm serious, do a Web search for them).
but it was never truly System V compliant.
I.e., it didn't conform to the System V Interface Definition? (That's the only form of "System V compliance" there is.) If so, could you provide a citation for that claim?
1. Legacy Unix, based on the AT&T Unix source code. eg: Solaris and AIX.
2. Certified Unix(tm). eg: Solaris, AIX, and OS X (apparently not included in their decline of Unix numbers).
3. Unix-like operating systems. eg: Linux, *BSD. (*BSD is also somewhat legacy in that AT&T incorporated their source code).
I don't think you can classify BSD as "Unix-like". My understanding that it is considered full-on Unix. And the basis for Solaris, no less.
4) Linux based phones (android)
And 4) differs from 3) how? As far as I know, the low-level parts of Android are the Linux kernel and the Bionic libc, which give you a Unix-like API; Dalvik sits atop those (and possibly other things).
That, and the fact that it runs on the MACH microkernel, which is completely non UNIX, but supports a Posix API layer.
The "POSIX API layer" is 4.4-Lite-derived kernel code plopped atop Mach's platform support, task/thread, and VM code; it's not part of the Mach layer. The Mach code knows nothing about networking or file systems; that's all BSD code (or Apple code). (There's also I/O Kit, which is neither BSD nor Mach, and is what's used for drivers that actually talk to devices, rather than "pseudo-drivers" such as the pseudo-tty driver and the BPF driver. The osfmk directory of the XNU source is the Mach code, the bsd directory is the 4.4-Lite-derived code, and the iokit directory is the I/O Kit code.)
But neither Oracle nor Sun used the name UNIX, either then
Well, actually, Sun's OS originally announced itself in the boot message as "Sun UNIX 4.2BSD Version {version number}", or something such as that, until AT&T got cranky; "SunOS" first appeared in the boot message in, as I remember, 4.0 (at which point it was also more "4.3BSD" than "4.2BSD").
nor now.
Define "used"/"uses". They don't use it in the OS's brand name, but they sure use it on, for example, the Solaris 11 overview page ("Brings the reliability, security and scalability of the #1 UNIX OS to the enterprise cloud"). Apple doesn't use "UNIX" in the name of their OS, either, but they used it in various advertising materials, e.g. "sends all other Unix boxes to/dev/null", and The Open Group told them they had to certify (Mac) OS X in order to use the trademark.
Annual fees apply, which are referenced by the Trademark License Agreement:
License fee for the TMLA to remain in place
Product registration fees
Program fees (royalties)
Separate fees apply for the test suites.
every vendor called it something other than UNIX - SunOS, Solaris, Iris, AIX, HP/UX, SCO OSE, Dynix, CLIX, et al. The only company I can recall calling it UNIX was Novell's UnixWare, but then Novell got USL from AT&T.
There was also Digital UNIX, which was the new name for DEC OSF/1 after it passed the test suite for SUS conformance. (It was later renamed Tru64 UNIX when there was no longer a "Digital Equipment Corporation".)
So it would cost Oracle nothing.
...as long as they stop calling Solaris "the #1 UNIX OS" (or anything else with "UNIX" in it).
It reminds me of the 'logical proofs' of the existence of God that Descartes held (though I have heard others attribute it to Augustine). Stated plainly it stated that he imagined a perfect God. One of the aspects of a perfect God is his existence. He couldn't imagine a perfect God if God did not exist, therefore, God must exist.
And so must the perfect chocolate ice cream cone, unless "must exist" is a property only of a God conceived of as being perfect in everything, and other "perfect" things don't have to be "perfect" in all their properties and thus aren't obliged to be be perfect with regards to the "existence" property. Of course, in that case, God must be, among other things, a perfect cup of espresso, in which case I'd really like to know God....
(Another question that might be raised is "is "existence" a property in the same way that "wisdom" and "having just enough of the crema on top" and "being able to make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it" are?")
We also have the option of voting for the Monster Raving Loonie Party at most elections. I personally recommend it - You know I am write!
So how many seats would they get if the UK adopted proportional representation? (Yeah, I know, that depends on what percentage of the legislature is determined by proportional representation rather than by votes in a particular district.)
Between OS-X, IOS and Android, this discussion is more than a little comical.
Not really, the article is quite specifically talking about Unix. Linux and iOS and OSX are not Unix.
Depends on how you define "Unix".
If you define it the way The Open Group does, i.e. "a trademark that we license to organizations that prove, using our validation suite, that their OS conforms to the Single UNIX Specification", then OS X is, in fact, Unix, but iOS or Android aren't.
If you define it the way TFA does, i.e. "a big enterprise server OS in the UN*X family from those traditional makers of UN\*X big iron that remain", none of them are Unix. That's the definition that's relevant here, so, as you note, the discussion isn't comical in that regard.
If OS X is Unix, what do you call iOS. And if we take Linux as a kind of Unix, how about Android? Or maybe the title should be written as "the steady decline of Unix Server License sale"
No. The title is right. You are just trying to generalize something that is specifically, and legally defined. You can argue that other systems even, DOS are similar to or like UNIX, but you can't say that they are UNIX.
Mac OS X, client and server are UNIX because they satisfy the Single UNIX Specification.
OS X client is irrelevant to the Network World article, as it's talking about servers, and OS X server is pretty much irrelevant to the server market they're talking about, so "The Steady Decline of Unix Server License Sales" or "The Steady Decline of Unix Servers" more clearly states what's happening than does "The Steady Decline of Unix".
Does this factor in mac osx considering it's a unix based operating system.
No. To quote the article:
Unix, the core server operating system in enterprise networks for decades, now finds itself in a slow, inexorable decline. IDC predicts that Unix server revenue will slide from $10.2 billion in 2012 to $8.7 billion in 2017, and Gartner sees Unix market share slipping from 16% in 2012 to 9% in 2017.
I rather suspect OS X's share in the Unix server market is pretty small, making its share of the server market even smaller. Unix desktop market, pretty large, but that's a different matter.
Yeah; I've been wondering what exactly they mean by UNIX here -- are we talking POSIX compliant OS (they almost all are these days), something based on BSD/AT&T code (BSD derivatives like OS X and FreeBSD, plus SVr3+ derivatives like HP:UX) are are we talking purely SVR 4+, and thereby mean SCO offerings when we say UNIX?
Well, "POSIX-compliant" can be split into "POSIX-compliant and the POSIX APIs are the core system APIs and the APIs on which a lot of the other system APIs are built" (UN\*Xes, including Linux and OS X) and "POSIX-compliant but the POSIX APIs are somewhat of an add-on and the core system APIs you're expected to use for most programming are different" (Windows with the Subsystem for UNIX or whatever it's called, z/OS's UNIX System Services, and the like).
But what people often mean by "Unix" when it's being contrasted with "Linux" is "commercial UNIXes in server rooms", which is closest to "something based on BSD/AT&T code", except that OS X doesn't count (not much in the way of computer-room systems runs it).
(There's also "OSes that have passed the Single UNIX Specification validation suite", which is closest to "POSIX-compliant OSes", and identical to it if you're talking about "POSIX" as meaning "Single UNIX Specification" and "compliant" as meaning "passed the validation suite" and not just "we sure intend this to match the SUS, but we haven't tested it" - Linux is more-or-less in the latter camp, although I'm not sure that they haven't picked some relatively minor places in the SUS to ignore).
Well, technically speaking, it costs Oracle money to use the name Unix, but they presumably pass that cost on to the customer. However, I suspect that cost is a small fraction of the total cost of the system, even if all you're running on it is Solaris, free-as-in-beer applications, and stuff you developed in-house.
Actually, it was a gay, hispanic Brazilian who happens to be the husband of a white, male, British journalist. But carry on...
Actually, it was a Brazilian who happens to be the (same-sex) partner (as far as I know, they're not married) of a white, male, American journalist who happens to write for, among other news sources, a British newspaper. But carry on....
Slashdot Mirror
Not really, the article is quite specifically talking about Unix. Linux and iOS and OSX are not Unix.
Mac OS X is UNIX. iOS and Linux are not.
The micro-kernel is not unix and the userland came from Unix.
As did the BSD part of the kernel (the kernel is more than "the micro-kernel"; "the micro-kernel" is the stuff in the osfmk directory of the XNU source, the BSD part is the stuff in the bsd directory, and there's also I/O Kit in the iokit directory).
It is unix-like, it is not unix.
The BSD part of the kernel, and much of the Darwin userland, is as much "unix", in the sense of being derived from AT&T code, as are the *BSDs. (It's also "unix" in the sense of passing the Single UNIX Specification test suite, but you presumably already knew that and weren't using "unix" in that sense.)
CISC has been RISC with a translation layer from the very beginning.
Or kinda sorta VLIW, if you mean "CISC has been implemented in microcode atop not-so-CISCy microengines from the very beginning", although it's also been implemented purely in hardware (in, for example, the IBM System/360 Model 75, the GE 600 series, and the Honeywell 6000 series, although that was in an era before the term "CISC" had been coined).
But all that matters is that once you try to port the system to another architecture, you end up with an inappropriate api model and a legacy of language and system design choices that were done in a different decade, for very different needs, and for completely different capabilities.
Or, if you're just talking about instruction set architectures, you end up with an operating system whose API model works Just Fine for both instruction set architectures (and ISAs other than the one ported from or the one ported to) and a legacy of language and system design choices that work Well Enough for both.
So presumably you're referring to system architectures, not instruction set architectures such as SPARC, MIPS, POWER/PowerPC/Power ISA, Alpha, and x86, as they really don't differ, at least in the way Windows or UN*X use them, in ways that make much of a difference.
OS X meets v4 for command line tools, but only v2 for the C API.
Same for Solaris 11, same for AIX 6, same for HP-UX 11i V3. Does this indicate that those OSes have not adopted any of the subsequent API changes, or does it indicate that the Open Group haven't updated their conformance suites so that you can't test anything better than v4 for the command-line tools and v2 for the C API?
(And do "V4" and "V2" refer to Issues 4 and 2, respectively, of the SUS, or do they refer to something else?)
The *BSDs and Linux are light years ahead of OS X's C API.
What are some of the significant things present in the C APIs of Linux and the *BSDs that are not present in the C API of OS X, and which, if any, of them were introduced in issues of the SUS later than 2?
Apple in general appears to be giving up on Unix. They've deprecated much of the Unix API in iOS, including simple things like fork(), and have stated that they want to move all application developers, including desktop app developers, to the iOS API.
Where have they stated that (in a way indicating that "all" includes not only the folks writing Mac Applications(TM) but also the people doing UN*X apps that work on OS X)?
It's true that all the UNIX companies are either dead (Sun, Intergraph, SGI)
One of these things is not like the others, given that Oracle bought Sun and are still selling their servers and their Unix. (SGI's still around, too, but good luck buying a MIPS-based server running IRIX from them.)
Depends on how you define Unix. OSX/iOS are based on FreeBSD & NetBSD. If you're talking about official, formal Unix OS's, neither Linux, the *BSDs or OSX would count as none of them are entitled to use the Unix trademark
Wrong.
To reuse an analogy from above, that's like claiming that all the quacking waterfowl that seem to like being fed bread in the park are not "certified Ducks(R)" because because the man from The Duck(R) Group(TM) has not been paid to come along and certifiy the ducks.
Well, in fact, legally speaking, they're not Duck(R) waterfowl. The point is that, given that they walk enough like a Duck(R) waterfowl, and quack enough like a Duck(R) waterfowl, people are willing to treat them the same way they treat Duck(R) waterfowl even though they cannot legally be called Duck(R) waterfowl. (I.e., people are willing to use Linux distributions as a substitute for Unix(R) systems because, legally speaking, even though they're not Unix(R) systems, they're enough like it that the differences aren't worth spending the extra money for a Unix(R) system.)
The other reason to not care is that the duck certificiation man is not, in fact, an ornithologist and would happily certify a goose as a Duck(R)(TM).
Well, yeah, I suspect most sites with Unix applications - oops, sorry, that's "applications for Unix(R) systems" :-) - are probably not going to port them to z/OS (the certification for which is for a standard that's almost 20 years old, BTW; are there any geese that have been certified as a recent version of a Duck(R)? The only recent Ducks(R) I see are all stuff that could reasonably be considered Real Unix), given that if their apps assume they're using ASCII, they're in for a rude surprise....
Really? That's all you got?
Where in your list is Tru64?
In the "dead" list, given that DEC^WCompaq^HP aren't coming out with new releases and given that it runs on an instruction set architecture of which no more implementations are being made and it isn't being ported to new architectures.
Irix?
In the "dead" list, given that SGI aren't coming out with new releases and given that the only instruction set it supports these days, MIPS is now targeted for various flavors of embedded computing rather than general-purpose computing, and it's not being ported to other instruction sets.
UNICOS?
These days, it's called "Linux".
SCO?
Wow, they're still around, not that they're players in the same "enterprise server" market as Oracle/HP/IBM and their respective proprietary Unixes.
Limiting yourself to Unixes you've encountered is a pretty lame standard.
Limiting yourself to Unixes that are still around, if the topic is the decline of "Unix", is, however, a rather reasonable standard.
To boot IBM now lets one run Linux on mainframe class hardware (the Z system). Actually the interesting trick is IBM in the mainframe line has run microcoded machines since at least the 370 line.
Since the 360 line - all but the Model 75 and Models 91, 95, and 195 were microcoded.
As a result to get a new architecture, you just write new microcode.
You could add new instructions with new microcode, but you aren't going to get Shiny Newer Faster Machines (at least not past a certain point) with new microcode on top of the Same Old Boring Hardware, and, with Shiny Newer Faster Hardware, you're going to need Shiny Newer Microcode to run atop that hardware to implement the instruction set. (And, with recent generations of hardware, most of the instructions are, I think, implemented in hardware, with some instructions implemented by trapping to PALcode^Wmillicode.)
No, Linux not a UNIX It doesn't pass the POSIX standards to get the UNIX trademark, and it never will (due to some significant architectural difference in the kernel and the resulting libc.)
Which specific parts of the Single UNIX Standard cannot possibly be implemented by Linux+glibc due to those architectural differences? Be specific, please.
Solaris originally added some System V enhancements to SunOS, but did not change it from BSD.
You're thinking of SunOS 3.2-3.5 and 4.x; the first SVisms were added in 3.2, and a bunch more were added in 4.0 (and RFS was added in, I think, 4.1). The "Solaris" name wasn't used until SunOS 4.1.1 (Solaris 1 = SunOS 4.1.1 + the corresponding versions of OpenWindows and maybe the desktop applications) and SunOS 5.0 (Solaris 2 = SunOS 5.0 + the corresponding versions of OpenWIndows and desktop applications).
As Solaris progressed more and more System V was implemented and added
SunOS 5.0 was Sun's version of System V Release 4. SVR4 was the result of AT&T and Sun combining the SV code base with the Sun code base, with a bunch of things (such as the VM subsystem) picked up from SunOS 4 with some changes (one of the most important VM subsystem changes was the renaming of the routine to look for an unmapped region in the address space from as_hole() to as_gap(); yes, I'm serious, do a Web search for them).
but it was never truly System V compliant.
I.e., it didn't conform to the System V Interface Definition? (That's the only form of "System V compliance" there is.) If so, could you provide a citation for that claim?
Unix has three definitions.
1. Legacy Unix, based on the AT&T Unix source code. eg: Solaris and AIX.
2. Certified Unix(tm). eg: Solaris, AIX, and OS X (apparently not included in their decline of Unix numbers).
3. Unix-like operating systems. eg: Linux, *BSD. (*BSD is also somewhat legacy in that AT&T incorporated their source code).
I don't think you can classify BSD as "Unix-like". My understanding that it is considered full-on Unix. And the basis for Solaris, no less.
4) Linux based phones (android)
And 4) differs from 3) how? As far as I know, the low-level parts of Android are the Linux kernel and the Bionic libc, which give you a Unix-like API; Dalvik sits atop those (and possibly other things).
That, and the fact that it runs on the MACH microkernel, which is completely non UNIX, but supports a Posix API layer.
The "POSIX API layer" is 4.4-Lite-derived kernel code plopped atop Mach's platform support, task/thread, and VM code; it's not part of the Mach layer. The Mach code knows nothing about networking or file systems; that's all BSD code (or Apple code). (There's also I/O Kit, which is neither BSD nor Mach, and is what's used for drivers that actually talk to devices, rather than "pseudo-drivers" such as the pseudo-tty driver and the BPF driver. The osfmk directory of the XNU source is the Mach code, the bsd directory is the 4.4-Lite-derived code, and the iokit directory is the I/O Kit code.)
But neither Oracle nor Sun used the name UNIX, either then
Well, actually, Sun's OS originally announced itself in the boot message as "Sun UNIX 4.2BSD Version {version number}", or something such as that, until AT&T got cranky; "SunOS" first appeared in the boot message in, as I remember, 4.0 (at which point it was also more "4.3BSD" than "4.2BSD").
nor now.
Define "used"/"uses". They don't use it in the OS's brand name, but they sure use it on, for example, the Solaris 11 overview page ("Brings the reliability, security and scalability of the #1 UNIX OS to the enterprise cloud"). Apple doesn't use "UNIX" in the name of their OS, either, but they used it in various advertising materials, e.g. "sends all other Unix boxes to /dev/null", and The Open Group told them they had to certify (Mac) OS X in order to use the trademark.
Back in the day when that trademark cost money
It still costs money:
every vendor called it something other than UNIX - SunOS, Solaris, Iris, AIX, HP/UX, SCO OSE, Dynix, CLIX, et al. The only company I can recall calling it UNIX was Novell's UnixWare, but then Novell got USL from AT&T.
There was also Digital UNIX, which was the new name for DEC OSF/1 after it passed the test suite for SUS conformance. (It was later renamed Tru64 UNIX when there was no longer a "Digital Equipment Corporation".)
So it would cost Oracle nothing.
...as long as they stop calling Solaris "the #1 UNIX OS" (or anything else with "UNIX" in it).
It reminds me of the 'logical proofs' of the existence of God that Descartes held (though I have heard others attribute it to Augustine). Stated plainly it stated that he imagined a perfect God. One of the aspects of a perfect God is his existence. He couldn't imagine a perfect God if God did not exist, therefore, God must exist.
And so must the perfect chocolate ice cream cone, unless "must exist" is a property only of a God conceived of as being perfect in everything, and other "perfect" things don't have to be "perfect" in all their properties and thus aren't obliged to be be perfect with regards to the "existence" property. Of course, in that case, God must be, among other things, a perfect cup of espresso, in which case I'd really like to know God....
(Another question that might be raised is "is "existence" a property in the same way that "wisdom" and "having just enough of the crema on top" and "being able to make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it" are?")
We also have the option of voting for the Monster Raving Loonie Party at most elections. I personally recommend it - You know I am write!
So how many seats would they get if the UK adopted proportional representation? (Yeah, I know, that depends on what percentage of the legislature is determined by proportional representation rather than by votes in a particular district.)
Between OS-X, IOS and Android, this discussion is more than a little comical.
Not really, the article is quite specifically talking about Unix. Linux and iOS and OSX are not Unix.
Depends on how you define "Unix".
If you define it the way The Open Group does, i.e. "a trademark that we license to organizations that prove, using our validation suite, that their OS conforms to the Single UNIX Specification", then OS X is, in fact, Unix, but iOS or Android aren't.
If you define it the way TFA does, i.e. "a big enterprise server OS in the UN*X family from those traditional makers of UN\*X big iron that remain", none of them are Unix. That's the definition that's relevant here, so, as you note, the discussion isn't comical in that regard.
Gotta be some metric boost there, right?
Not in the enterprise server market, which is what TFA was talking about.
If OS X is Unix, what do you call iOS. And if we take Linux as a kind of Unix, how about Android? Or maybe the title should be written as "the steady decline of Unix Server License sale"
No. The title is right. You are just trying to generalize something that is specifically, and legally defined. You can argue that other systems even, DOS are similar to or like UNIX, but you can't say that they are UNIX.
Mac OS X, client and server are UNIX because they satisfy the Single UNIX Specification.
OS X client is irrelevant to the Network World article, as it's talking about servers, and OS X server is pretty much irrelevant to the server market they're talking about, so "The Steady Decline of Unix Server License Sales" or "The Steady Decline of Unix Servers" more clearly states what's happening than does "The Steady Decline of Unix".
Does this factor in mac osx considering it's a unix based operating system.
No. To quote the article:
I rather suspect OS X's share in the Unix server market is pretty small, making its share of the server market even smaller. Unix desktop market, pretty large, but that's a different matter.
Yeah; I've been wondering what exactly they mean by UNIX here -- are we talking POSIX compliant OS (they almost all are these days), something based on BSD/AT&T code (BSD derivatives like OS X and FreeBSD, plus SVr3+ derivatives like HP:UX) are are we talking purely SVR 4+, and thereby mean SCO offerings when we say UNIX?
Well, "POSIX-compliant" can be split into "POSIX-compliant and the POSIX APIs are the core system APIs and the APIs on which a lot of the other system APIs are built" (UN\*Xes, including Linux and OS X) and "POSIX-compliant but the POSIX APIs are somewhat of an add-on and the core system APIs you're expected to use for most programming are different" (Windows with the Subsystem for UNIX or whatever it's called, z/OS's UNIX System Services, and the like).
But what people often mean by "Unix" when it's being contrasted with "Linux" is "commercial UNIXes in server rooms", which is closest to "something based on BSD/AT&T code", except that OS X doesn't count (not much in the way of computer-room systems runs it).
(There's also "OSes that have passed the Single UNIX Specification validation suite", which is closest to "POSIX-compliant OSes", and identical to it if you're talking about "POSIX" as meaning "Single UNIX Specification" and "compliant" as meaning "passed the validation suite" and not just "we sure intend this to match the SUS, but we haven't tested it" - Linux is more-or-less in the latter camp, although I'm not sure that they haven't picked some relatively minor places in the SUS to ignore).
Especially if it's owned by Oracle...
Well, technically speaking, it costs Oracle money to use the name Unix, but they presumably pass that cost on to the customer. However, I suspect that cost is a small fraction of the total cost of the system, even if all you're running on it is Solaris, free-as-in-beer applications, and stuff you developed in-house.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck it isn't a duck unless it is branded a duck?
It's not a DUCK®, it's a Waterfowl That Attenuates Quacking Noises. For copyright reasons, of course.
Actually, trademark reasons. Oh, and nothing can be a "DUCK®", it can only be a "DUCK® waterfowl". Can't use a trademark as a noun, after all....
(Unfortunately, commenting on this - which I figured I'd do at some point - leaves me unable to moderate your article +10^100 Funny.)
Actually, it was a gay, hispanic Brazilian who happens to be the husband of a white, male, British journalist. But carry on...
Actually, it was a Brazilian who happens to be the (same-sex) partner (as far as I know, they're not married) of a white, male, American journalist who happens to write for, among other news sources, a British newspaper. But carry on....
There should be a new law--"Miranda Rights"--but named after Carmen Miranda.
I would certainly want the right to wear hats covered with fruit protected.