[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <ec5b6b52-bfeb-4b55-a97f-44c567fb1572 at s20g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
	sapienzaf <sapienza at noesys.com> writes:
> On Apr 11, 9:32 am, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>> Actually,
>> there is a standard for what an OS should provide.  It's called POSIX.
>> Which OS come closer?
>>
> The POSIX standard is a set of features that Unix-like operating
> systems should provide, and not a standard for the design of any
> operating system in general.
> POSIX = "Portable Operating System Interface for Unix".  Note the "for
> Unix" part of the acronym.  That hardly establishes it as "a standard
> for what an OS should provide", in the general sense of your
> statement.

And yet back before they gave up trying to compete VMS was striving for
this standard.  Go figure.

And, of course, even though they are  not "a unix OS" Windows has worked
hard and met much of the POSIX standard.

Face it, it is not so much a "Unix" standard as a "common API" standard.
And it is not the first time this has been tried.  The last time was a
very unix-like API as well.  Should tell you something.

> Though I haven't confirmed it, according to some sources many of the
> open-source Unix-like operating systems aren't fully POSIX compliant.
> GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD are on the not-fully-compliant
> list.

Yeah, because thet refuse to pay some third-party money to tell them they
are what they are.  But then once the IEEE gets their hands on anything
it becomes all about the money.

> You should do the research yourself to answer the question "which OS
> comes closer".  You'll have to provide a comparison of the compliant
> and non-compliant features of OpenVMS (with the POSIX libaries
> installed) versus any particular distribution of Linux or whichever
> Unix variant you have in mind.  I'm sure it will be informative for
> all of us to see the results of your research.

I have better things to do with my time.  In any event, I believe VMS
dropped POSIX a few versions back so it is really moot.

And being as the original argument was what the standard for features
offered by an OS should be, just which standard does VMS comply that
the other OSes do not?

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>