system@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (System Admin (Mike Peterson)) (03/21/91)
In article <507ad317.1bc5b@pisa.citi.umich.edu> rees@citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees) writes: >Why not? AT&T still calls their product "Unix," and look at all the things >they broke in system V. And what about Berkeley? Their version of Unix >bears little resemblance to anything that ever came out of Bell Labs. You're >annoyed because Apollo Unix doesn't look like anyone else's, but in fact no >one's Unix looks anything like the original, so who's to say which one is >"real Unix?" The answer to your question is in your next paragraph: >Besides, AT&T (who owns the name "Unix") likes to define Unix as anything >that passes the SVVS. By this measure, Domain/OS passes, Berkeley doesn't. >But I'm not going to go out and buy a computer just because it's SVID >compliant. In fact, that's a mark against it for me. I'm going to buy the >computer that gets the job done the way I want it done. AT&T/Sun can define SYS5 Unix to be whatever they want it to be; I can not tell if Domain/OS is functionally equivalent to SYS5.3 since we don't use that environment. Many things have been "reorganized" in SYS5.4; if Apollo ever does SYS5.4 they will have to at least simulate the same directory structures, etc. If they don't do it, they won't be SVID/SVVS compliant, and users will have legitimate complaints; if they do it, users should direct complaints to the UI people who foisted it on them (good luck :-) ). Domain/OS is certainly not BSD4.x since many BSD programs can not be ported without (often severe) hacking. We buy machines because they will run desired software (at least according to the marketing types), and will conform to the user interfaces that we have standardized on (e.g. TCP/IP logins, X/Motif). If Apollo is going to market a "BSD Unix", it should compile and run BSD programs (the regular user utilities, etc., though seem pretty complete, especially compared to SGI/IBM). There is of course no BSD compliance suite, except the school of hard knocks. I can hardly wait for OSF :-(. -- Mike Peterson, System Administrator, U/Toronto Department of Chemistry E-mail: system@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca Tel: (416) 978-7094 Fax: (416) 978-8775