[BBLISA] Desktop policies and UNIX-ish operating systems

[Arthur Gaer]

Well, The Open Group, which certifies compliance with the UNIX  
specification, says that both Mac OX 10.5 and 10.6 (i.e. Leopard and  
Snow Leopard) meet the current UNIX 03 standard--along with Solaris  
10, and a couple of recent versions of AIX and HP-UX.

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

So although *you* may think that the only reason people think OS X is  
Unix-like is that it uses a NetBSD kernel (and I think the people from  
CMU might argue with you on exactly what kind of kernel OS X does use)  
those who certify such things seem to think OS X pretty much *is* UNIX.

Perhaps you should lobby to get your minimum requirements added to the  
next UNIX  spec?

Having worked with Unices for more than two decades, it doesn't seem  
to me that the differences between OS X and other current *nix-like  
OS's are any greater than the differences amongst the various  
commercial and non-commercial *nixes of the last 20-odd years.  Unless  
you go back 30 years to Seventh Edition, the degree of variation seems  
to be rather constant.  And Seventh Edition didn't have X, either.  Or  
package management.  Or...

Of course, many hackers out there nowadays seem to think the only One  
True Unix is Linux as they've had no real exposure to any other *nix.   
And any variation from the Unix distro they're most familiar with  
isn't "real" Unix--I've had the unfortunate experience of trying to  
get their code to compile on non-Linux systems.  They'd be wrong, too.

Arthur Gaer
gaer at math.harvard.edu


On Jan 30, 2010, at 1:35 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

> In my opinion, running the netbsd kernel doesn't make OSX much more
> unix-like, than running the VMS kernel makes Windows NT vms-like.   
> They're
> wholly separate beasts, with almost no connection to the platform from
> whence it originally derived.
>
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