1003.2 Command Groups && Are we standardizing Unix or not?

[std-unix at ut-sally.UUCP]

From: hadron!jsdy at seismo.css.gov (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Date: 26 Jan 87 14:36:44 GMT
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA

In article <6881 at ut-sally.UUCP> hoptoad.UUCP!gnu at cgl.ucsf.edu (John Gilmore) writes:
>There are several points here, and I didn't make things very clear.
>> From: gwyn at brl.arpa (Douglas A. Gwyn)
>> The standard should not be weakened unduly to permit existing
>> inadequate facilities to be advertised as already conforming!
>This last statement is indicative of a severe miscommunication
>somewhere.  I thought we were standardizing *UNIX*.  U. N. I. X.

Yes, is miscommunication.  (tm)UNIX is a trademark of Bell Labs,
and now a Registered Trademark of AT&T.  Only those folk have
the right to standardise it.  And they have:  "System V (ex-III):
consider it The Standard."  They issued the SVID (System V Interface
Desciption).  And then re-wrote it: twice, so far.

POSIX, P1003.2, is a Standard for An Operating System Interface.
Note that it's called POSIX, and not that registered trademark.
Yes, it looks a lot like our favourite OS that's better than any
other OS out there (yet).  No coincidence.  But it doesn't have
to look exactly like any existing version.

However, the quote above referred specifically to the Shell!  Not
to the OS, but to the user interface.

BTW, I rather agree that such things as UUCP, mail, et al.
should be mentioned in the standard at least by reference or
in an appendix as minimal interfaces.  But room should be
allowed to make these replacable by updated facilities, and
perhaps even to be made an optional package.
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy at seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
			jsdy at hadron.COM (not yet domainised)

Volume-Number: Volume 9, Number 29