Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 12:22:57 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Randall Senn <randall_senn@yahoo.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, webmaster@linux.org, www@openbsd.org Subject: Re: Unix vs unix-like and unix-type Message-ID: <19990206122256.E79100@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <19990206014343.14500.rocketmail@send201.yahoomail.com>; from Randall Senn on Fri, Feb 05, 1999 at 05:43:43PM -0800 References: <19990206014343.14500.rocketmail@send201.yahoomail.com>
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On Friday, 5 February 1999 at 17:43:43 -0800, Randall Senn wrote: > > Dear Sirs: > > While looking at pages for other than NT operating systems, I see > that Linux and Open BSD are claimed to be UNIX -like, or UNIX-type, > while FreeBSD is claimed to be UNIX. It makes me wonder if Open BSD > is indeed also UNIX-like? Is it? (And what makes it UNIX instead > of UNIX-like anyway?) That depends on what you're talking about :-) UNIX is a trade mark of AT&T. Oh, no, they sold it to Univel. Wait, Univel became part of Novell. Hmm, Novell sold the product to SCO. Ah, but SCO gave the name to the Open Group. If we look at this question of ownership, none of the free operating systems are UNIX. The Open Group introduced certification. UNIX 95. UNIX 98. Anybody who wanted to provide a minimum of UNIX-like functionality and a lot of money could have their product branded UNIX. Or was that 95% UNIX? If we look at the question of certification, IBM's mainframe OS/390 is UNIX. Microsoft's "NT" environment is UNIX. None of the free operating systems are UNIX. UNIX was originally a research project within AT&T's Bell Laboratories. It was taken up both commercially (System V) and by universities, particularly the University of California at Berkeley. UCB had a very strong influence on UNIX, and all current versions of UNIX contain UCB code. They called their software the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). If we look at the question of origin, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are UNIX. Linux is UNIX-like. I find "UNIX-type" a rather funny description, but obviously it's valid. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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