Two questions about UNIX(r) certification.

[Erik Trulsson]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 01:39:53PM +0000, Aryeh M. Friedman wrote:
> Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:
> > I recently noticed that Apple's new OS, Leopard, is Unix certified.
> 
> "UNIX Certified" what the #@$#$@ does that mean as far I know no one is
> in a position to make such a statement except maybe the current owner of
> the Unix trademark (sco if I am not mistaken)

SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark.  The current owner of is The Open
Group, and they are indeed the ones that certify products as being officialy
'UNIX'.


> >
> > I'd imagine that the big reason that FreeBSD hasn't done this yet is:
> > It costs a lot of money.
> 
> And give SCO a reason to actually consolidate it's illegitimate claim to
> be the steward of Unix when there is no such thing beyond the holder of
> the trademark.
> >
> >
> > That said, if in theory one were to try to get the operating system
> > certified (say, to increase awareness and market share versus the
> > penguinistas)...
> >
> > a) approximately how much money is "a lot"?
> >
> > and
> >
> > b) How far short, technically, does FreeBSD fall from the standard
> > (we'll ignore operational semantics for the time being)
> 
>  MacOS-X is FreeBSD at it's core thus we are ready now (actually all
> that is required is POSIX complience)

MacOS X is partly based on FreeBSD, but they have also taken code from
several other places, as well as made a whole lot of changes themselves.
That MacOS X is UNIX-certifified says very little about how well FreeBSD
will do in that regard.


-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se