[TUHS] Origin of the name POSIX

[Heinz Lycklama]

We had just a little more than 60 people involved in
the /usr/group effort, with David Buck, Don Kretsch
and Eric Petersen as co-editors. The IEEE POSIX
POSIX standards effort had hundreds of participants.
But we did have all of the major companies involved
in the UNIX market participating.

Heinz

On 6/27/2024 7:34 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 7:59 AM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>     A way to verify this would be to look for attendee lists from early
>     POSIX meetings, though I'm having trouble locating them. 
>
>
> I was the original editor (more in a minute), and I believe I have an 
> early draft on my Masscomp machine, which is currently not powered up.
> I'll try to add it to my to-do list to bring this online. The first 
> section has an attendee list.
>
> I also have (in a box in my attic) some of the original handouts, 
> including minutes.  That is already on my to-do list.
>
>     My initialsearch turned up this document, a 1995 retrospective
>     from Hal
>     Jespersen, where he credits Stallman for coining the name "POSIX":
>     https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/210308.210313.
>
>  I just read it. Much is correct, but that document has numerous 
> errors, including the transition from /usr/group to IEEE (which Heinz 
> and I were involved in - Hal was not). I'll send a number of 
> updates/corrections later.For instance, the C standard was not related 
> to the UNIX standard and was not originally championed by /usr/group - 
> but rather the PC-based folks.
>
> Remember, this document came about before the age of laptops. We made 
> changes and suggestions during the meetings. The /usr/group document 
> was edited offlineafter the meetings (Heinz may remember who did that 
> work).  We started the same process by the time we transitioned to 
> IEEE.  Since the meetings were originally held currently with a 
> /usr/group // UNIForum or USENIX event, they were always near one of 
> the Masscomp field offices.  I told Jim that I could (and did) arrange 
> for a loaner Masscomp system with a number of Wyse-60 terminals to be 
> there for our meeting.
>
> By the way, Jim was worried that all documents were following the IEEE 
> rules of being numbered and correctly indexed. But by editing at the 
> meeting and starting with the /usr/group document, we did turn it into 
> an IEEE-style draft in under two years.  As a result, I ended up as 
> the defacto editor for the first few drafts.  As I said, I believe I 
> have an early copy (in troff, of course) on my Masscomp box.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
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