What is REAL UNIX? (was: Re: at files and permissions)

[Chuck Karish]

In article <16775 at rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
(John F. Haugh II) wrote:
>In article <8122 at bsu-cs.bsu.edu> dhesi at bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>>The problem is easily solved.  Don't say (or even imply) "UNIX" at all
>>unless you are sure you are making a general statement.  Just mention
>>specifically what operating system and revision level you are
>>discussing (e.g. "System V Release 3" or "4.3BSD").

>The problem is even more easily solved than that.  Try to remember that
>the string ``UNIX'' is a registered trademark of AT&T which is used
>[ according to their lawyers ;-) ] to describe a particular product
>produced by AT&T.

This is not true.  AT&T licenses the term UNIX to other vendors,
who configure their systems differently.

For example:

% strings /vmunix | grep UNIX
4.3 BSD UNIX (EARTH_SCIENCES) #1: Wed Sep 14 11:59:47 PDT 1988

I expect that SCO UNIX will differ significantly from AT&T UNIX and
from ISC UNIX.  The differences may be even greater under the
possibly-less-restrictive licensing terms for SysV.4.

The previous suggestion, that USG documentation and the SVID tell us
what SysV.3 really is, is also inadequate.  The published documentation
does not describe the system's configuration and behavior adequately to
provide a portable reference for security issues, among other aspects
where detail is very important.  Since there is no explicit standard,
each vendor can provide a different configuration and still pass the
SVVS.  Since each vendor fixes many SysV bugs independently, provides
their own work-arounds for bugs in the SVVS, and inevitably introduces
their own new bugs, different ports do behave differently.

The assertion that AT&T's porting base for SysV.3 is the only real UNIX
is sheer chauvinism.  It does not provide an adequate way to deal with
real-world problems.

	Chuck Karish		{decwrl,hpda}!mindcrf!karish
	(415) 493-7277		karish at forel.stanford.edu