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

[Michael Kraemer]

sapienzaf schrieb:

> Because there are still incompatibilities between the Unix variants,
> Because some Unix variants may never be (nor attempt to be) POSIX
> compliant.  And because POSIX has been superceded.  Twice.  First by
> Spec 1170, then by SUS (the Single Unix Specification).

I would not call that a failure.
Nobody in his right mind would expect those variants to be
100% compatible, it's not even desirable,
for the sake of competition.
However, a minimum common base should exist, so back in
its time, POSIX was a step in the right direction,
essentially a common libc. SUS is just the logical successor.

> The various Unix variants (or Unix-like operating systems) may have
> achieved hardware vendor independence, but there's still an issue of
> software vendor independence.  Develop an application for GNU/Linux
> and it might not run on AIX (depending on which non-compliant features
> of GNU/Linux are being used).  Similarly, develop an application for
> GNU/Linux and it might not run on OpenBSD.

That's a totally different issue.
These problems arise because
a) configure & friends are braindead tools
(ISTR packages where the "configure" took longer than the compile)
b) "modern" bloatware developers most often rely on
yet more tools rather than making up their own minds,
even for trivial tasks (ISTR packages where the configure script
was larger than the source text)
c) Linux distro's come with all prerequisites preloaded,
in contrast to their competitors.