# Is it correct to say that Unix is still alive?



## RodrigoBSD (Sep 21, 2019)

In my opinion there should be a distinction between Unix and Unix-based operating systems or Unix clones, it is true that Unix was quite influential but as an AT&T operating system, Bell Labs, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy , and Joe Ossanna no longer exists. Even so to say that Unix is still alive for me is a mistake, I personally prefer the term "Unix-based operating systems (or clones such as GNU / Linux) are the most used in such a market (whatever that market)" to refer to Unix as operating system.


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## Cthulhux (Sep 21, 2019)

Solaris, AIX and HP-UX are still alive.


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## sidetone (Sep 21, 2019)

I see Unix as meaning both that operating system, and as a category.

Much of FreeBSD or NetBSD was done on top of Unix. When AT&T took back or reclaimed rights to their OS, that the opensource community through Berkeley had to rewrite those proprietary parts, to use with their contributions to Unix as BSD.


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## RodrigoBSD (Sep 21, 2019)

Cthulhux I think you did not understand what I meant, what I said is that Unix as an operating system no longer exists, what exists today are Unix based operating systems or Unix cloes and those operating systems you mention are based operating systems in Unix and certificates but Unix an operating system from 1969 to this day is dead and is only a certificate.


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## RodrigoBSD (Sep 21, 2019)

sidetone Another reason to distinguish between Unix and operating systems that are based on Unix or are Unix clones is that today no Unix-Like probably has not a single line of code for the AT&T bone code even if they are based on Unix or They are clones of it are functionally similar but they are not the same and I consider that saying that Unix is still alive is a way of belittling all Unix-Like as if they were all Unix, as if there was nothing that will differentiate them from Unix and misrepresent them. things confusing a dead operating system with operating systems based on Unix or its clones, obviously everyone knows that every Unix-Like is not Unix but they say that Unix is still alive and it is not.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Sep 21, 2019)

RodrigoBSD said:


> Another reason to distinguish between Unix and operating systems that are based on Unix or are Unix clones is that today no Unix-Like probably has not a single line of code for the AT&T bone code even if they are based on Unix or They are clones of it are functionally similar but they are not the same and I consider that saying that Unix is still alive is a way of belittling all Unix-Like as if they were all Unix, as if there was nothing that will differentiate them from Unix and misrepresent them. things confusing a dead operating system with operating systems based on Unix or its clones, obviously everyone knows that every Unix-Like is not Unix but they say that Unix is still alive and it is not.


People tend to focus on one aspect of an OS and ignore others. For me, in practice, Unix-Like is UNIX for my purposes. Even DOS is UNIX to me for the simple reason that I don't have to change my mind set and methodology when using that, compared to FreeBSD, Linux, MINIX, etc.

From a historical trade mark perspective, indeed UNIX is dead. Perhaps there's not even a scrap of original code, but from a practical every-day perspective I'm using UNIX regarding of what the historical development has been, because I'm using *UNIX ideas*. A historical understanding is important, but we must not mix up the purely academic with daily practice.

So, historically UNIX is dead. In every day use, it lives on!


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## Remington (Sep 22, 2019)

Solaris is the closest you can get to a true UNIX.  AT&T and Sun worked together to merge System V and SunOS which became Solaris.  I would say Solaris 8 is more of a classic UNIX as Solaris 11 is more modern.

AFAIK, UNIX System V is dead.  You can find UNIX System V emulator for Windows and its around 5MB on a floppy disk.


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## Datapanic (Sep 22, 2019)

I have 3 Solaris 8 boxes running in my den...  They are alive and well.  2X Netra X1's and a SunBlade 100.


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## ralphbsz (Sep 22, 2019)

The real question is: How do you want to define Unix? There are many ways to do it. One way would be to ask Dennis and Ken whether a certain machine is Unix or not. Sadly, that's difficult: Dennis is no longer with us, and few people are able to reach Ken (he's alive, but leads quite a private life). By the way, I hear rumors from well-informed sources that Ken uses a Chromebook as his personal machine.

Here is a useful definition: Anything that passes a full POSIX conformance test must be Unix. That's because it has all the interfaces that allow compiling and running Unix-style C programs, and shell scripts. Similarly, one could use the SUS conformance tests (which are the ones that allow a system to call itself Unix). But be careful: While useful, this definition includes many things that by most other definitions would not be called Unix. For example, the old IBM mainframe operating system MVS (today brand-named z/OS by IBM) passes those conformance tests!

But you propose another test:



RodrigoBSD said:


> Another reason to distinguish between Unix and operating systems that are based on Unix or are Unix clones is that today no Unix-Like probably has not a single line of code for the AT&T bone code ...


Clearly, Linux contains no single line of the copyrighted AT&T code, nor do the *BSD versions since something Net/2 or thereabouts (or at least they should not, and if any were left behind, it would be a mistake). But I'm quite sure that AIX still contains AT&T source code, and HP-UX probably does too (in the case of HP-UX I'm not sure because I last had access to its source code ~20 years ago, while I've been able to see the AIX source code until recently). So by your definition those are Unixes. And AIX continues to be actively sold: Go to www.ibm.com, type in your credit card number (if you have a VERY high limit credit card), and a few days later you'll have an AIX machine at home.

The whole thing boils down to a pointless and sophomoric question. The same applies to humans: People replace nearly all their cells regularly. A little baby is born, and has an identity as a human (let's call it Adam). After 50 years, there are probably no cells from the original baby left in Adam's body, and probably no atoms or molecules either, all having been replaced. But it is still Adam.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 22, 2019)

To add: Apple's OSX is UNIX.


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## Cthulhux (Sep 22, 2019)

macOS is Mach/BSD which had diverted from Unix quite a few decades ago, e.g. in handling sockets.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 22, 2019)

Cthulhux said:


> macOS is Mach/BSD which had diverted from Unix quite a few decades ago


macOS is certified UNIX. I thought it was called OSX now but whatever.


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## rigoletto@ (Sep 22, 2019)

Apparently Apple is using they own post sockets implementation since a while.


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## xtremae (Sep 22, 2019)

RodrigoBSD said:


> [..] They are clones of it are functionally similar but they are not the same and I consider that saying that Unix is still alive is a way of belittling all Unix-Like as if they were all Unix, [..]





RodrigoBSD said:


> [..] what I said is that Unix as an operating system no longer exists [..]



I don't see it that way. Fundamentally, UNIX was a research project that introduced and popularized interesting ideas around systems design. The design and ideas propagated through various implementations, including the one from AT&T, which reflect the UNIX philosophy. The clones are nothing more than implementation details that reflect the principles of a UNIX system, all of them being the result of UNIX research.


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## Remington (Sep 22, 2019)

Out of curiosity, I was able to install UNIX System V in VirtualBox (macOS).  It works but very primitive so don't expect much from it.  You can follow the video how to install it and they have the link to download UNIX System V file.  Enjoy!





_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P57ukAtCGs_


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## RodrigoBSD (Sep 22, 2019)

ralphbsz I prefer to call Unix a certification and Unix Like a family of Unix-like operating systems whether or not they are certified but never say that Unix, the 1969 operating system is still alive because of more children it has had.
PD:By the way I do not get to quote others because I am not very used to the page


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## Remington (Sep 22, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> To add: Apple's OSX is UNIX.



macOS is registered as certified UNIX since it is POSIX compliant and paid large fee but it's not pure UNIX.  FreeBSD and many other open source UNIX variants can be registered as certified UNIX but they can't afford to pay the fee.

As I have said above that UNIX System V is primitive and you will notice there are huge differences to modern UNIX systems.


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## olli@ (Sep 23, 2019)

Strictly speaking, anything that is certified to pass SUS (the Single UNIX Specification), is allowed to call itself “UNIX”. Everything else is not.
Since the set of certified systems is not empty, the answer to the question “Is UNIX still alive?” is clearly “yes”.

As far as FreeBSD is concerned: It is not SUS-certified, so it may _not_ officially be called “UNIX”, but it strives for POSIX compatibility, as does Linux. The difference is that FreeBSD was derived from classic BSD UNIX (even though not much of it is left in FreeBSD today), while Linux was not. For that reason, FreeBSD is sometimes referred to as a “Unix derivative”, and Linux as a “Unix clone”.

(Note that the above is a gross simplification of things. There are several books about BSD and UNIX history.)


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 23, 2019)

Remington What olli@ said.


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## Remington (Sep 23, 2019)

olli@ said:


> Strictly speaking, anything that is certified to pass SUS (the Single UNIX Specification), is allowed to call itself “UNIX”. Everything else is not.
> Since the set of certified systems is not empty, the answer to the question “Is UNIX still alive?” is clearly “yes”.
> 
> As far as FreeBSD is concerned: It is not SUS-certified, so it may _not_ officially be called “UNIX”, but it strives for POSIX compatibility, as does Linux. The difference is that FreeBSD was derived from classic BSD UNIX (even though not much of it is left in FreeBSD today), while Linux was not. For that reason, FreeBSD is sometimes referred to as a “Unix derivative”, and Linux as a “Unix clone”.
> ...



I don't consider FreeBSD, Solaris, Minix, Linux or macOS as a pure UNIX but a derivative based on AT&T UNIX System V.  Many of the original codes in modern UNIX systems derived from System V no longer exist and System V is discontinued or dead.  Therefore the original UNIX is dead but UNIX devriates or concepts lives on.

I don't consider Microsoft Windows a true window since the first window was on Xerox Alto in 1970's and it ceased to exist.  Microsoft Windows and Apple Lisa came in early 1980's. 

So here again... Do you consider macOS to be a true or pure UNIX even it was heavily modified from original UNIX code base?


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## kpedersen (Sep 23, 2019)

olli@ said:


> Strictly speaking, anything that is certified to pass SUS (the Single UNIX Specification), is allowed to call itself “UNIX”. Everything else is not.
> Since the set of certified systems is not empty, the answer to the question “Is UNIX still alive?” is clearly “yes”.



Not to mention that Inspur K-UX (based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux) has obtained UNIX certification showing that it is even possible for non-UNIX-based operating systems to apply.

These days, since UNIX is a specification and not an actual technology; it will likely outlive Linux (and all current operating systems today).


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 24, 2019)

Remington said:


> Do you consider macOS to be a true or pure UNIX even it was heavily modified from original UNIX code base?


It is a true UNIX because the people who own that specification and test for such things, the openGroup, say it is.


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## Remington (Sep 24, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> It is a true UNIX because the people who own that specification and test for such things, the openGroup, say it is.



OpenGroup means nothing to me since they're 'for-profit' organization and UNIX certification isn't free and annual royalties isn't free either. I was surprised to see macOS, a direct descendant from BSD, made the list since its OS is very heavily modified and many codes are pulled from FreeBSD. Apple paid OpenGroup a lot of money to get its macOS certified as UNIX while FreeBSD was sued to have the name 'UNIX' removed from its documentations.  OpenGroup is saying that macOS is more true UNIX than FreeBSD. How ironic is that?

OpenGroup holds no credibility whatsoever since they're biased and they only will cater to those who can afford to pay to have their OS called 'true' UNIX while their codes are mostly absent from original UNIX created by Dennis Ritchie.

The only true 'UNIX' is AT&T System V.  Everything else are just derivatives or clones.


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## ralphbsz (Sep 24, 2019)

Remington said:


> OpenGroup means nothing to me since they're 'for-profit' organization ...


The original Unix was created by AT&T Bell Labs. AT&T is a for-profit organization. Some people consider it to be one of the most most evil ones ever in the US economic system, a monopoly that for a long time had no equal. I see it more nuanced.

The Unix certification process has one purpose: To determine whether an OS meets the interface standards to be interoperable with another set of OSes. I keep reminding people that this has nothing to do with the question whether the OS contains source code from the original Dennis&Ken prototype; as an example, IBM's z/OS has the Unix certification, and its heritage is as a mainframe OS (which predates Unix by about a decade or two).



> I was surprised to see macOS, a direct descendant from BSD, made the list since its OS is very heavily modified and many codes are pulled from FreeBSD.


Have you tried using a mac at the bare OS level, without the GUI, just with C code, a compiler, and the standard system calls and libraries? It is Unix, in the sense of that everything one expects to work on Unix will work there too.



> Apple paid OpenGroup a lot of money to get its macOS certified as UNIX ...


If you are trying to insinuate that Apple illegally bribed the OpenGroup to get the certification, that is not only complete nonsense, it is also libel and slander. Please stop making groundless accusations.



> while FreeBSD was sued to have the name 'UNIX' removed from its documentations.


Can you explain more about that? I must have forgotten about that lawsuit.

But as a reminder: Neither FreeBSD nor MacOS contain a single line of source from the original Bell Labs (a.k.a. Dennis&Ken) Unix.



> ... to have their OS called 'true' UNIX while their codes are mostly absent from original UNIX created by Dennis Ritchie.


Well, if you want to define "Unix" as "contains code from Dennis", in that case AIX (and I presume HP-UX and perhaps a few others) are true Unix. But I think that definition is not particularly helpful.



> The only true 'UNIX' is AT&T System V.  Everything else are just derivatives or clones.


Why not Version 7? Why not Plan 9? Why not 4.3 BSD? All of those contain code from Dennis and Ken (in the case of Plan 9, I don't know whether Dennis did coding himself, but Ken certainly did).


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## sidetone (Sep 24, 2019)

There seems to be 3 definitions of UNIX. One which is a current trademark, which is not the original Unix. The original Unix (trademark). And Unix derivatives/clones. I don't consider something that needs a boardroom to make a decision a part of the original Unix, because by definition, you could take a portable drill, and say, "THIS IS UNIX", because they paid to have a non-software object to be Unix. "Unix" in that sense is just a trademark, where there's nothing that excludes a mechanical clock being called Unix. Of course, they won't do that, because it will make it obvious to others, and it will hurt their reputation of what they're able to call Unix.

Because FreeBSD had a history of being developed with Unix, it is more of a Unix than anything else, except maybe what some described as Solaris. An open source project is likely to be excluded from a Unix trademark name, because they are not charging for use of their project to pay an organization for a trademark name. They could, if they saw use of it for reputation, but it looks like it would be a waste of money and effort. Then it would have to conform to their rules, which can change, which would be controlled by them, instead of being the best operating system it can be in its own style. FreeBSD has its own reputation, and doesn't need that anyway. FreeBSD is its own trademark. The name BSD means more than Unix, because there are true BSDs that are opensource, and aren't controlled by a board in that way. Technical standards or history make it BSD, while this doesn't apply to the name Unix.


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## Remington (Sep 24, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> The original Unix was created by AT&T Bell Labs. AT&T is a for-profit organization. Some people consider it to be one of the most most evil ones ever in the US economic system, a monopoly that for a long time had no equal. I see it more nuanced.



If it wasn't for AT&T System V then none of OSs that we have witnessed in our lifetime will exist today and we probably still be using landline phone.  iOS and Android both are UNIX derivatives. It's true that AT&T was notorious company to begin with but UNIX changed everything technologically and we can thank AT&T for that.



> The Unix certification process has one purpose: To determine whether an OS meets the interface standards to be interoperable with another set of OSes. I keep reminding people that this has nothing to do with the question whether the OS contains source code from the original Dennis&Ken prototype; as an example, IBM's z/OS has the Unix certification, and its heritage is as a mainframe OS (which predates Unix by about a decade or two).



Who determines what is UNIX standard and the requirements to pass the test to be certified?  Again, they are in position to create or remove any requirements or specifications.  If they certified an OS to UNIX and later they changed the requirements which they decertify the OS.  That's why they don't have absolutely authority on which OS are UNIX or not.  FreeBSD is UNIX based.  So is OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris but they're all different.  So what gives OpenGroup the authority to say which OS is UNIX and what's not?  It has become so ambiguous as to what is defined as true UNIX.  Alot has changed in last 36 years.  



> Have you tried using a mac at the bare OS level, without the GUI, just with C code, a compiler, and the standard system calls and libraries? It is Unix, in the sense of that everything one expects to work on Unix will work there too.



Have you tried installing macOS on an ordinary PC without using a bootloader?  It's not true UNIX.  Like I said, it's very heavily modified.



> If you are trying to insinuate that Apple illegally bribed the OpenGroup to get the certification, that is not only complete nonsense, it is also libel and slander. Please stop making groundless accusations.



I didn't say that, again, OpenGroup is in position to change the rules anytime and OpenGroup and Apple was involved in lawsuits before.



> Can you explain more about that? I must have forgotten about that lawsuit.



I meant that Open Group sued Apple because Apple used 'UNIX-based' and Open Group didn't like anyone using the word 'UNIX' without passing their certification process.  Apple counter sued and claimed that UNIX is generic since its changed hands so many times, sued, counter sued, source codes changed, diverged or cloned into many different OS, etc.

Also AT&T sued BSD which resulted in settlement and BSD deleted 2/3 of AT&T source codes.



> But as a reminder: Neither FreeBSD nor MacOS contain a single line of source from the original Bell Labs (a.k.a. Dennis&Ken) Unix.



If that's the case then all UNIX variants are not true UNIX.


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## ralphbsz (Sep 24, 2019)

Remington said:


> If it wasn't for AT&T System V then none of OSs that we have witnessed in our lifetime will exist today and we probably still be using landline phone.


No, there was lots of computer work before, in parallel with, and after Unix. There was multics, there was a whole slew of interactive OSes on mainframe (ever used CICS and TSO?), there was RSX-11 and VMS (which in many ways was a better Unix), there were a whole slew of research OSes in the 60s and 70s which are mostly forgotten today. And in the minicomputer world, there was a lot of interesting stuff, like RDOS (Data General), and my favorite perverse one, PrimOS (the only OS I know of that was written in Fortran), plus AS/400 (where every object is a memory address, sort of the polar opposite of Plan9, where every object is a file name), and S/38 (where everything was written around the relational database).



> So what gives OpenGroup the authority to say which OS is UNIX and what's not?  It has become so ambiguous as to what is defined as true UNIX.


There are may ways to define what the word Unix means. You are pushing one particular worldview. The Open Group has another one. I bet that there are many others. This is not mathematics, where everything needs to be clearly defined in axioms, and then all knowledge can be derived in the form of lemmas and theorems. Natural human language is more ambiguous, as is the term Unix.



> Have you tried installing macOS on an ordinary PC without using a bootloader?  It's not true UNIX.


That's not factually correct. MacOS contains Unix (in the sense of: it can do all the things other Unixes can do, for example compile and run any program that is written to the API standards), but it can also do other things (like serve the needs of the GUI, and restrict itself to run only on Apple-certified hardware, I know with hacky exceptions). What you are saying is like: Birds are not like animals, because animals can't fly, whereas birds can.



> Also AT&T sued BSD which resulted in settlement and BSD deleted 2/3 of AT&T source codes.


That is a massive distortion of what really happened. To begin with, there is no way to sue "BSD" in the modern sense of the world. Instead, what was sued was first BSDi (a small commercial company, long since defunct, which was distributing an enhanced version of the Berkeley public release), and later the University of California (not specifically Berkeley, and in particular not the CSRG at Berkeley). Also, it wasn't AT&T who sued. Instead, USL sued first, but in the middle of the suit USL changed from being owned by AT&T to being owned by Novell and having nothing to do with AT&T. Second, the removal of all AT&T source code happened before the lawsuit, in the case of Net/1 long before the lawsuit. Third, in the middle of it all the University sued USL, claiming that they had illegally taken networking code from BSD and used it in their product, without the necessary attribution (BSD is freely distributable, and already was back then, but you can't remove the copyright notice).

The claim that what was removed was "2/3 of the source code" is also wrong; if you talk to people who were there (like Kirk McD or Lynn/Bill J), it was a relatively small effort to remove AT&T-licensed code in the early 90s, since so much had already been replaced in the CSRG at Berkeley. You have to remember that OSes used to be much smaller; the idea of dozens of millions of lines of source would have been laughable back then.



> If that's the case then all UNIX variants are not true UNIX.


I keep bringing up AIX: AFAIK it contains AT&T licensed source code that does go back to Dennis and Ken. So this statement seems also false.


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## CraigHB (Sep 27, 2019)

This thread prompted me to go back and read about the breakup of AT&T.  Learned some things there.  It's interesting the patent system allowed them to become a monopoly, but then then if you get too big that's not okay either. 

Anyway this thread does make me think about what Unix really is.  More of an idea or design philosophy than an actual product then.  Still the idea is nebulous, what is it that defines Unix, is it POSIX or System V?

I thought one of the authors of the original AT&T Unix spent some time at Berkeley working on BSD.  Wouldn't that make BSD a product of the original design?  In that case it ~is~ Unix rather than a clone or a "Unix like" system.


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## bookwormep (Sep 27, 2019)

Side note: You should listen to attorneys argue the definitions of words and semantics. This seems all too familiar.


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## sidetone (Sep 27, 2019)

It is arguably Unix, but if it calls itself Unix, it gets sued, because Unix (tm) a trademark.


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## ralphbsz (Sep 28, 2019)

CraigHB said:


> It's interesting the patent system allowed them to become a monopoly,


Patents are actually a legally created and legally protected monopoly. Once you have a patent on something, the intent is that you could be the only one that can benefit from exploiting the idea, if you so wish.

In reality, a patent is nothing but a license to sue. A patent is worthless, unless you're willing to enforce it. The court system will help you with that, but to use the court system, you first have to front lots of money. In the case of patent lawsuits, millions of $, sometimes dozens of millions.



> Anyway this thread does make me think about what Unix really is.


There are many different meaning of the word Unix. You picked one:


> More of an idea or design philosophy than an actual product then.


There are many others. Two were discussed in this thread: Something that contains code originally written by Dennis & Ken. And: something that passes the Unix conformance test that the OpenGroup administers. All these definitions are sensible, and in many cases they overlap. But in some they don't.

People tend to think that words have exactly one meaning. This is nonsense. It kind of works in math, where one carefully defines things (an integer is ... and so on). Even there, it leads eventually to contradictions (Goedel, Russell, all that). In natural language (human language), words have many meanings. Claiming that "If it is Unix, it must follow a certain design philosophy" or such is just nonsense.[/quote]



> I thought one of the authors of the original AT&T Unix spent some time at Berkeley working on BSD.  Wouldn't that make BSD a product of the original design?


Ken Thompson took a sabbatical (half a hear or a year?) from Bell labs and spent it as Berkeley. I honestly don't know whether he spent more time hacking on Unix or teaching CS classes. I think some of Ken's family (perhaps his children) live in the bay area, so it may have been partially a family visit. But the Berkeley CSRG had a complete copy of the AT&T source code, and access to talk to the original authors (for example at conferences. And when BSD started, it was (by definition) 100% AT&T and zero Berkeley, while towards the end it was nearly completely non-AT&T code. So it was clearly heavily influenced by the original design and philosophy.


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## CraigHB (Sep 29, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> Claiming that "If it is Unix, it must follow a certain design philosophy" or such is just nonsense.



One of the things I really like about FreeBSD is I know what to expect from version to version.  Saying Unix has no design philosophy means there's no standard.  Things could be changed wildly and still be Unix.  Though I know that's not the case for FreeBSD since it tries to conform to the principle of least astonishment.  That's actually a big comfort for me.  I really hate it when software is radically changed for seemingly no good reason, just ruins my day every time.


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