Mac OS X Leopard is Now Officially Unix 351
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!
Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Dumb questions (Score:1, Insightful)
If it meant anything (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Money is taken away from the idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Doesn't make me want to buy an Apple any more (Score:2, Insightful)
I regard the drones who buy a Dell machine with Vista as a good deal more trance-like than somebody "thinking different".
Peter
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is very little (as the summary acknowledges, to be fair). Though I can't say it was pointless for Apple to get the certification, if only because it's a selling point to ageing senior managers who vaguely remember when "Unix" actually meant something (and think it still does). Since the Apple and Mac names aren't particularly associated with the Enterprise/Server market, the Unix brand gives them a "serious" selling point.
Sure, they could have pointed out the "BSD" underpinnings, and any real expert would know what they meant. But for the management types, "Unix" is probably still the name to go for.
Linux meanwhile *is* spiritually just as much "Unix" as any of the "official" licensees... but it has enough brand recognition in its own right anyway.
Re:No Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
The certification process is expensive. Very expensive. A Linux distro could, in fact, be certified, but no one has been interested in spending that much money to get one certified. It would take a lot of money, and what's it worth, really?
It would take a lot of money.....? Hey, yo! Mark Shuttleworth! You're a billionaire, right? You want Ubuntu to be UNIX-certified, right?
Re:Thank goodness! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is Linux, it doesn't NEED to be UNIX.
Perhaps this lets the gov't buy Macs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It passed the certification (Score:4, Insightful)
The Stamp of Stupidity (Score:2, Insightful)
Are systems branded UNIX binary compatible? No
Are systems branded UNIX object compatible? No
Are systems branded UNIX source compatible? No
Filesystems? Display Mechanisms? Libraries? Nope, no, zilch.
Compliers? Linkers? Make? Bzzt. Bzzzzzt. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.
APIs? Kernel Internals? Are you serious?
WTF does "UNIX" mean? No two systems officially certified as "UNIX" have anything at all to do with one another. As near as I can tell, it comes down to support of one set of APIs and nothing more. If a batch of generic source code with no real-world relevance can compile with some set of switches specific to your machine, and you pony up the bucks, you get the seal. It is of no use to me as an end user, integrator, or developer. Once I pick one OS I'm stuck, and moving is as hard as going to any other OS.
On the other hand, there are dozens of Linux distros that are all binary-compatible with one another, differing only to the extent that I have real choice among user interfaces and administration options.
Having said all that I'm a die-hard Solaris bigot
Why this is significant (but not earth-shattering) (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's part of the argument that there are viable -standards-based- alternatives to Windows. As a long-time open systems advocate (and someone who worked on POSIX standard), I think this is A Very Good Thing for the industry as a whole, and I'd hope Linux advocates would also see this as progress. Note that Linux does have some known inconsistencies with the POSIX standard, so this is something OS X did that Linux has not achieved.
2. I know (private communications) that there were problems between Apple and Open Group on this for a long time. Some of these were technical problems, areas where apparently Apple didn't conform to the standard. Now those problems have been fixed.
The Linux community needs to work with Open Group and IEEE and ISO to get Linux into conformance (and I think changes to the POSIX standards could well be appropriate here. Presumably we've learned some things over the last 15 years in specifying and implementing the Unix interface.)
3. Open Group testing does have some value, it has been known to find bugs in vendor implementations.
So the fact that OS X provides a complete Unix implementation is hardly earth-shattering. But at least it's a commitment by Apple to pay for the certification, and a recognition that Apple has jumped through both technical and managerial/business hoops.
Now Apple needs to work through the FIPS/Common Criteria certifications for IA.
dave
Re:Dumb questions (Score:5, Insightful)
dave
Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think its a major achievement (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Linux, BSD and Unix certification (Score:2, Insightful)
The same is true within the plethora of Windows variants and Linux variants. This does not add value to any of those OSes beyond what one would already expect. BSD *is* a Unix derivative (and, at this point, Unix is also a BSD derivative, ever since System 5 rolled in BSD 4 features), so it makes perfect sense for a BSD-based system (MacOS/X) to aspire to compliance with other OSes of its ilk.
You seem to be making an assumption, however, that portability across "species" of OS lineage has some value. I'm really not sure that it does beyond the basic level of API standards compliance that any modern POSIX system (be it Unix, Linux or even Windows) maintains. Modern OSes are just too different, and an effort to create universal portability will ultimately result in very poor utilization of at least n-1 of the OSes out there (c.f. Java). It won't be too long, I think, before we're ready for a new round of standardization around core OS features to layer on top of POSIX, as there's certainly now a new high-water-mark for "stuff you expect to work the same everywhere," but much of the OS still falls well above that mark and remains a moving target as OSes continue to evolve.