On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Michael Torrie wrote: > On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 12:38, Ross Werner wrote: > > Just pretend you've been using (the Unix-based) Mac OS X too much lately. > > A much more forgiveable sin ;-) > > Actually right now the Open Group is all up in arms over Apple's use of > the "Unix" trademark in describing their OS as "Unix-based" and being a > "Unix" operating system. They have asked Apple to either stop referring > to their OS as such or to get certified that they meet posix and unix98 > standards (which they currently don't). > > By the way, OS X is not actually Unix-based. The kernel is a mach-based > kernel that runs a BSD/pseudo posix personality layer on top, which is > used by most userland code.
Interesting. I think it's good that the Open Group is trying to get OS X to meet the requisite standards. Of course, saying OS X is "not actually Unix-based" depends a lot on what you mean by "Unix-based". According to the Unix History timeline (http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html) it seems that OS X is based on Rhapsody, which is based on OPENSTEP, which is based on NeXTSTEP, which is based on BSD, which is based on LSX, which is based on UNIX. So if, when you say it's not Unix-based, you mean that most of its code doesn't come from Unix, then you're definitely correct. But it is definitely Unix /based/ in the same way that Linux is Unix-based. (Which is the reason that OS X users, heathens though they may be, are just as welcome as Linux users to the *Unix* Users Group mailing list ;-) ~ ross -- This sentence would be seven words long if it were six words shorter. ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
