4BSD is dead???

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <419 at gvax.cs.cornell.edu> jqj at gvax.UUCP (J Q Johnson) writes:
>My guess is that incompatible UNIX versions will be with us as long as UNIX
>is, but they will no longer be bsd vs SysV.

This is quite true.  My concern is not to preclude true value-added
enhancements by vendors, but rather to obtain a guaranteed portable
subset environment to support applications.  Such an environment must
be sufficiently rich to limit the need to reach outside it to variably-
interfaced features.  I think that the ANSI X3J11 C language standard
(which specifies a large amount of the C library too) will go a long
way toward this; IEEE 1003.n will cover much of the remaining
specifically UNIX environment.  Both of these have a good chance of
becoming ISO standards.  AT&T's SVID is nice too, but it suffers from
being associated with a commercial entity (that is, it would be
less hassle to specify ANSI/IEEE/ISO standards in a procurement
contract).  Much of the SVID is available now; IEEE 1003.1 is out for
public review in the form of a "trial use" standard; and the ANSI X3J11
proposed C standard may be sent out for public review before the end of
1986.  Fortunately all three standards agree quite closely with each
other.

The biggest problem I am aware of is that 4.3BSD as shipped by Berkeley
is still far from compliance with these standards.  This is the issue
I would like to see satisfactorily addressed soon, at the source rather
than individually by each BSD-based system vendor.  (I volunteer to do
some of the work; perhaps Sun would feed back some of their work to UCB,
if Berkeley would agree to pick it up.)