karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish) (07/09/89)
In article <16775@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) wrote: >In article <8122@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >>The problem is easily solved. Don't say (or even imply) "UNIX" at all >>unless you are sure you are making a general statement. Just mention >>specifically what operating system and revision level you are >>discussing (e.g. "System V Release 3" or "4.3BSD"). >The problem is even more easily solved than that. Try to remember that >the string ``UNIX'' is a registered trademark of AT&T which is used >[ according to their lawyers ;-) ] to describe a particular product >produced by AT&T. This is not true. AT&T licenses the term UNIX to other vendors, who configure their systems differently. For example: % strings /vmunix | grep UNIX 4.3 BSD UNIX (EARTH_SCIENCES) #1: Wed Sep 14 11:59:47 PDT 1988 I expect that SCO UNIX will differ significantly from AT&T UNIX and from ISC UNIX. The differences may be even greater under the possibly-less-restrictive licensing terms for SysV.4. The previous suggestion, that USG documentation and the SVID tell us what SysV.3 really is, is also inadequate. The published documentation does not describe the system's configuration and behavior adequately to provide a portable reference for security issues, among other aspects where detail is very important. Since there is no explicit standard, each vendor can provide a different configuration and still pass the SVVS. Since each vendor fixes many SysV bugs independently, provides their own work-arounds for bugs in the SVVS, and inevitably introduces their own new bugs, different ports do behave differently. The assertion that AT&T's porting base for SysV.3 is the only real UNIX is sheer chauvinism. It does not provide an adequate way to deal with real-world problems. Chuck Karish {decwrl,hpda}!mindcrf!karish (415) 493-7277 karish@forel.stanford.edu