[TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?

[Rik Farrow]

A little digging turned up FIPS 151-2:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140220130516/http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip151-2.htm

This website also explains Microsoft's desire to support several APIs:

https://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/

Rik


On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:04 AM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> wrote:

> As I remember, part of the rationale was that DEC wanted something that
> could be specified in an RFP that was defined in terms of an interface,
> rather than an implementation. In theory this would allow them to propose
> VMS with an appropriate interface layer. I don't know if anything like this
> was ever created. But the interface standard sure was, of course.
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:32 AM Rik Farrow <rik at rikfarrow.com> wrote:
>
>> I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
>> government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted to specify
>> products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
>> Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
>>
>> So POSIX was born partially as a way of letting it be known you wanted a
>> Unix variant rather than something else.
>>
>> Certainly porting was an issue. I did work for a software shop in the
>> late 80s and early 90s that produced graphics software, and porting between
>> Unix systems was relatively easy, compared to, say, moving the software to
>> Apollo's DomainIX, a sort of Unix-like version of Apollo Domain. With Unix
>> systems and this software, the biggest issue was fonts, as the software
>> needed to be able to calculate the extent, that is, the bounding box, for
>> text that was to be displayed.
>>
>> Strangely enough, the other big issue was time.
>>
>> Rik
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 6:29 AM Peter Weinberger (温博格) via TUHS <
>> tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>
>>> and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
>>> my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > > Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came
>>> first, ...
>>> > > ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
>>> > > by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
>>> >
>>> > This.
>>> >
>>> > Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
>>> > a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
>>> >
>>> > - IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
>>> >   AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
>>> >
>>> > - DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
>>> >   based workstations
>>> >
>>> > - Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
>>> >
>>> > - Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
>>> >
>>> > - Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
>>> >   Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
>>> >
>>> > - Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
>>> >   3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
>>> >
>>> > Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't
>>> portable.
>>> > Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
>>> > of mixing and matching happening, too.
>>> >
>>> > There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
>>> > Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C
>>> standard
>>> > also helped.
>>> >
>>> > HTH,
>>> >
>>> > Arnold
>>>
>>
>
> --
> *My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com <mrochkind at gmail.com>*
>
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