Standards Update, NIST Shell-and-Tools FIPS Workshop

[Doug Gwyn]

Submitted-by: gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)

In article <558 at usenix.ORG> std-unix at uunet.uu.net writes:
>Standards let the government avoid vendor-specific requirements like
>UNIX or SVID.  ...
>The Government has a burning need for a standard, they find it
>politically unacceptable to use UNIX System V as that standard, ...

I have to challenge this often-heard (from DEC, for example, who don't
want truly open systems in the first place) rationale.  In fact there
have been more than one major (in the billion-dollar range) federal
acquisition where SVID conformance was specified, and that specification
was successfully upheld in appeals.  Thus the government's official
position would appear to be that SVID is an acceptable standard.

Note that SVID is not the same as AT&T UNIX System V implementation,
although there is clearly a relationship between them.  (But there
also is between UNIX System V and POSIX, ANSI C, etc.)

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 148