From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Oct 30 07:02:22 1996 Return-Path: owner-chat Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id HAA06006 for chat-outgoing; Wed, 30 Oct 1996 07:02:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from obie.softweyr.com (slc31.modem.xmission.com [204.228.136.31]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id HAA05987 for ; Wed, 30 Oct 1996 07:02:17 -0800 (PST) Received: (from wes@localhost) by obie.softweyr.com (8.7.5/8.6.12) id JAA03726; Wed, 30 Oct 1996 09:01:19 -0700 (MST) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 09:01:19 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <199610301601.JAA03726@obie.softweyr.com> From: Wes Peters To: Paul Richards CC: chat@freebsd.org, terry@lambert.org Subject: Re: POSIX Conformance (Unanswered in "questions" so I forwarded...) In-Reply-To: <57iv7sy9xv.fsf@tees.elsevier.co.uk> References: <199610292306.QAA22160@phaeton.artisoft.com> <57iv7sy9xv.fsf@tees.elsevier.co.uk> Sender: owner-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Terry Lambert writes: % Note that having access to the NIST/PCTS is not the same as being % certified. Certification still requires an authorized testing laboratory % to run the test, and it only applies to a particular release level: the Paul Richards writes: > What happens when you apply patches to a certified OS? Is the > certification then void? Do Sun get each patchlevel certified because > we run with loads of patches on our systems, does that make them > non-certified :-) Sure does. Unless, of course, Sun has gotten their system certified with the *exact* set of patches you have applied. Not that Posix certifaction is anything more than a marketing bullet anyhow. Nobody really cares that a system is *really* Posix-compliant, it is simply something that gets written into contracts specified by the US gov't. They require vendors to use Posix-compliant systems, but they *don't* require them to write their software using the Posix APIs, so they're still not portable. In many cases, the Posix interfaces represent a small enough subset of the system functionality that you *cannot* develop any given application using only Posix calls and get any real performance out of it. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com