As far as I know IEEE is not really a standard, it is a recommendation, while ANSI is a standard. ANSI is the American standard and ISO is International.

ANSI accredits US standards committees and delegates, both to US and International Meetings. ANSI can vote to accept a standard. While I don't know the issue behind POSIX, it's entirely possible that ANSI accredited IEEE to standardize things. They have done this to many various groups for standards within their wheelhouse. Sometimes this has worked well, sometimes it has worked to the interest of some particular entity, speaking as someone who has spent one to many days hanging out in standards meetings as a "technical expert". On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 11:35 AM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- James D. (jj) Johnston Chief Scientist, Immersion Networks

The POSIX Standard for the UNIX System was actually started under the umbrella of /usr/group, which was comprised mostly of commercial companies and users of the UNIX system. /usr/group was the forerunner of UniForum. I chaired the /usr/group standard from 1981 to 1984, after which we turned the work over to the IEEE, chaired by Jim Isaac and co-chaired by myself. I worked for INTERACTIVE Systems Corp, in Santa Monica, CA- the first commercial UNIX company that provided for UNIX system software on the DEC PDP11 and VAX computers, and led the porting of the UNIX System to many different computer architectures from micro to mainframe. Heinz On 6/26/2024 11:52 AM, segaloco via TUHS wrote:

On Jun 26, 2024, at 9:36 PM, John Levine <johnl(a)taugh.com> wrote: It appears that Charles H Sauer (he/him) <sauer(a)technologists.com> said: In view of the well known horrible numeric properities of the hex floating point, why? Because they had so much code written to work around it? R's, John

It came from OSF, the Open Systems Foundation, which was easily the most arrogant organization I ever dealt with. I think they were disbanded as a result of a lawsuit involving restraint of trade, or monopolistic behavior, or a cartel, or something along those lines.

On 6/26/24 13:29, Marc Rochkind wrote: hope) and IBM, battled Sun but was were monopolistic OSF merged with X/Open to become The Open Group, though the lawsuit you mention is described in the History section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation . know After the merger, Motif was included, along with CDE and the X Window System, as part of The Open Group's "Unix 98 Workstation" standard. Later versions of the Unix standards dropped the GUI components altogether. don't know At least the Xview library and olvm window manager were released as open source, and were available on some early Linux distros. Some other applications are still available from either https://www.darwinsys.com/olcd/ or https://github.com/IanDarwin/OpenLookCDROM .

-- -Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith(a)oracle.com Oracle Solaris Engineering - https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris

rms had nothing to do with the name posix. I have no idea where that comment came from.

The p1003 committee for Ieee was the portable operating system standard and at the time adding ix was the norm. POSIX became the term we all used to refer to the work we doing. Rms was not involved in any way

RMS is an odiferous pedophile. Every time I was within six feet of him I needed to go shower.

------ Original Message ------ From "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog(a)lemis.com> To "Clem Cole" <clemc(a)ccc.com> Cc "Alan Coopersmith" <alan.coopersmith(a)oracle.com>; "Marc Rochkind" <mrochkind(a)gmail.com>; tuhs(a)tuhs.org Date 6/26/24, 9:11:00 PM Subject [TUHS] Origin of the name POSIX (was: ANSI (C) vs IEEE (POSIX) Standards Body Selection) standard and to

On Wednesday, 26 June 2024 at 20:44:12 -0400, Clem Cole wrote: At the very least, from rms himself: https://stallman.org/articles/posix.html There's a reference to this page in the Wikipedia page on POSIX. and rms suggests that he was involved in the committee? Not true? Maybe a different, related committee? Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php

FWIW: it is possible rms sent in comments and offered thoughts that we had to handle. He may consider that as partition. He might have even been at later .2 meetings after I stopped coming. But he was not at any .1 meetings and the name was created during that time by Jim Isaak IIRC. FWIW Keith Bostics was at some of the .2 meetings Keith might haven there when we got .1 to the stage and when started the .2 work. I was part of all off .1 and an early draft of .2. Keith and I wrote the proposal that became pax after I demonstrated tpio my hack to splice a cpio front end to tar (I never wrote car). A few meetings later we got the first draft of .2 out and was pretty much done at that point. So if rms joined then it’s possible but the standard was in the oven before he might have done anything. And since we travelled to different sites for the meetings and he did not have a firm to cover his travel costs, I would very surprised he was at many later ones either. Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 10:46 PM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote: > Garbage. Rms was never at any early IEEE meeting that I was at - you > could smell him a mile away as he rarely bathed. I certainly knew him in > those days. I also have an early draft with all participants named and he > is not one of them!! > > Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual > > > On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 9:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> > wrote: > >> On Wednesday, 26 June 2024 at 20:44:12 -0400, Clem Cole wrote: >> > rms had nothing to do with the name posix. I have no idea where that >> > comment came from. >> >> At the very least, from rms himself: >> https://stallman.org/articles/posix.html >> There's a reference to this page in the Wikipedia page on POSIX. >> >> > The p1003 committee for Ieee was the portable operating system >> standard and >> > at the time adding ix was the norm. POSIX became the term we all used >> to >> > refer to the work we doing. Rms was not involved in any way >> >> rms suggests that he was involved in the committee? Not true? Maybe >> a different, related committee? >> >> Greg >> -- >> Sent from my desktop computer. >> Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. >> See complete headers for address and phone numbers. >> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program >> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php >> >

On Jun 27, 2024, at 10:11, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote: On Wednesday, 26 June 2024 at 20:44:12 -0400, Clem Cole wrote: At the very least, from rms himself: https://stallman.org/articles/posix.html There's a reference to this page in the Wikipedia page on POSIX. rms suggests that he was involved in the committee? Not true? Maybe a different, related committee? Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php

On Wednesday, 26 June 2024 at 20:44:12 -0400, Clem Cole wrote: At the very least, from rms himself: https://stallman.org/articles/posix.html There's a reference to this page in the Wikipedia page on POSIX. rms suggests that he was involved in the committee? Not true? Maybe a different, related committee?

On Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 7:59 AM Dan Cross <crossd(a)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

rms had nothing to do with the name posix.  I have no idea where that comment came from.

On Thursday, June 27, 2024, Chet Ramey via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote: Richard confirms it on his own website, too. https://www.stallman.org/articles/posix.html --Andy

After the merger, Motif was included, along with CDE and the X Window System, as part of The Open Group's "Unix 98 Workstation" standard. Later versions of the Unix standards dropped the GUI components altogether. At least the Xview library and olvm window manager were released as open source, and were available on some early Linux distros. Some other applications are still available from either https://www.darwinsys.com/olcd/ or https://github.com/IanDarwin/OpenLookCDROM .

- Aron (a member of X3J16 [C++] for 2 years)

On 2024-06-26 14:35, Marc Rochkind wrote (in part): Once upon a time, ANSI even had conformance testing (though that is not really relevant to this thread #6-). S.

Note: I am a founding and voting member of both the original /usr/group, IEEE P1003 (a.k.a. POSIX), and a commenter for ANSI X3.159-1989 (/a.k.a./ C89). Heinz Lycklama who is also on this list, was chair of the former and also a founder of P1003. Below are, of course, my opinions and my memory of times.  Heinz please add color/corrections as appropriate. On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 1:56 PM segaloco via TUHS &lt;tuhs(a)tuhs.org&gt; wrote: Good morning, I was wondering if anyone has the scoop on the rationale behind the selection of standards bodies for the publication of UNIX and UNIX-adjacent standards.  C was published via the ANSI route as X3.159, whereas POSIX was instead published by the IEEE route as 1003.1. Different groups and functions. More in a minute. Was there every any consideration of C through IEEE or POSIX through ANSI instead? Not really; each>>generally<< had a role that the other did not, although those lines can and have blurred. Is there an appreciable difference suggested by the difference in publishers? Yes -- again, more shortly. In any case, both saw subsequent adoption by ISO/IEC, so the track to an international standard seems to lead to the same organizations. Right, but you are ahead of yourself. Per Wikipedia: ANSI was most likely formed in 1918, when five engineering societies and three government agencies founded the American Engineering Standards Committee (AESC).[8] In 1928, the AESC became the American Standards Association (ASA). In 1966, the ASA was reorganized and became United States of America Standards Institute (USASI). The present name was adopted in 1969. Prior to 1918, these five founding engineering societies: * American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE, now IEEE) * American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) * American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) * American Institute of Mining Engineers (AIME, now American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers) * American Society for Testing and Materials (now ASTM International) had been members of the United Engineering Society (UES). Leaving out a >>lot<< of detail, but under ASA was their directive: the /*Accredited Standards Committee X3 */ This means that the US government, particularly the US War Department (late DoD), would accept their recommendations. However, a published set of rules for how standards would be created, agreed upon, /etc/., for the USA became established. One of their early roles was creating standards for the computer industry, such as what would become ASCII,/a.k.a./, ASA X3.4-1963, and ASA X3/INCITS 40-1966 - 9-track mag tape. One of the things the folks at X3 had started working on we standards that allowed program/interchange/ between different manufacturers, although allowing manufacturers to be independent and add their own features but keep a core that a programmer could rely upon.   So, their purvey included creating standards for FORTRAN, Algol, Cobol, and later C.  They also developed test suites for many of their standards and offered services to firms like computer manufacturers to certify that their products meet the standard. Thus, a program that worked when compiled under different manufacturer compilers could be written. Note that AIEE/IEEE was a founding member of ASA, but it eventually became an accredited standards body independent of ASA/ANSI.  The subtle difference was the idea of "sameness," which said this is functionally the same as something else made by two different electrical manufacturers and, as a result, could interoperate between them.   This was important to the US DoD because they wanted more than one place to get similar products, at least ones that could play well together.  So, they became where things like networking, power, /etc./, were defined and agreed upon. Of note, independent of IEEE, we were testing groups, but if you made an error, it was basically self-correcting -- people stopped using your product when it was discovered you could not handle back-back ethernet packets at full speed. So what happened... We graduated a bunch of young engineers of my generation who know C and UNIX.  AT&T has made the sources to both technologies "open" and freely available (libre as opposed to beer).  We take the knowledge with us, and they both start to be cloned.  Since the microprocessor came in vogue around the same time, retargeting the C compiler at many places like Universities made sense - I did it (poorly) for the Dennis' compiler for what would become the 68000 @Tektronix in the summer of 1979. But if you look at the USENIX tapes from those times, you will see many different developer tools for those processors.    However, since the AT&T tools were licensed, several implementations grew that were mostly, if not 100%, clean of any AT&T's IP. Since there was no standard for the language itself, and the processors were not PDP-11, many differences crept into the different compiler implementations. The biggest was support for the x86 and target platforms such as CP/M and DOS, which did not store files in the same format as UNIX and differentiated between text files and binaries like earlier 12/18/36-bit systems from DEC had. In the early 1980s, a group of compiler firms, originally from the PC business, applied to set up and create the ANSI X3.159 committee.  [Thank the Lord, Dennis agreed to join it too, as he could rein in several of the worst proposals like near/far pointers, although the terrible text file support leaked].  It was a very slow process since a standard did not come about a vote until 1989 and was agreed upon until 1990. Meanwhile, in UNIX land there, USENIX had started [see my paper: C.T. Cole, UNIX: /A View from the Field as We Played the Game/, October 19, 2017, Le CNam – Laboratoire, Paris France], but that was primarily an academic organization.  Firms like manufacturers DEC, HP, Tektronix, and IBM, as well as ISVs such as Heinz's Interactive System Corporation and Microsoft, needed an organization that focused more on their needs as commercial ventures.  /usr/group (which was later re-branded as Uniforum) was created. For many reasons (many of which have been discussed here), the manufacturer's versions of UNIX had begun to differ.  But they had a common language C, since many, if not most, used AT&T licensed C compilers, the compilers' input syntax was already mostly common, but one of the things that this group realized was it was still "work" for an ISV to move their UNIX based application between systems and they needed something more than just a language standard. To address this need /usr/group, formed a standard committee under Heinz's leadership.  In 1985, we published the first UNIX standard.   One of the members of the group, Jim Issak, who then was from another small manufacturer building a system with a UNIX-like OS, Charles River Data Systems (CRDS - BTW: pronounce that and smile -- marketing people are wonderful),  realized that a /usr/group created standard was helpful to us in the USA marketplace since /usr/group was not accredited and thus our work would not be useful to be sent to the US Gov much less and alter International standards body such as ECMA or ISO. BTW: since our OS's were already getting different beyond the system call layer, we decided to start with just the system call API which was mostly common, plus agree to an interface standard to exchange magnetic media. But this is where things like the file <unistd.h> come from to help make the differences contained in a manner that a recompile allowed code to move from one vendor's system to another. By the early 1980 my former colleague, Maurice Graubie from Tektronix, had been the chair of the IEEE 802 committee, which had published its set of standards.  BTW the number.Xstuff raised huge hackles at IEEE at the time.  It had never been done. Maurice had come up with solutionas a way to keep the 801 standard together when it was beginning to diverge and fall apart with the Ethernet folks on one side and the IBM token ring folks on the other. Since the OS was similar to other electrical standards, allowing one manufacturer to build something the US government buys and knowing they could get something similar from someone else, Maurice introduced Jim to the folks at IEEE. Jim succeeded in putting together all of the paperwork, getting the proper sponsorship from IEEE institutional members, and forming a committee to create IEEE Proposal 1003. As the next /usr/group meeting approached, we were already starting to work on a revision. Jim explained the formal IEEE process. We officially voted to disband that meeting and reconvene as IEEE P1003, where Heinz graciously handed the gavel to Jim.  It also set us back a bit because the /usr/group document was not in a form that IEEE could accept.  So the first task was the rewrite (and use their voting process) to have it accepted. But because of Maurice's great compromise for the 802 committee, we started by saying this would be the first of N standards,/i.e/., 1003.1 for the system calls, and we would (like 802) create later standards for things like the commands.  I know that both Maurice and Jim had a little pushback by IEEE NYC, but I am thankful that a good idea prevailed. It's possible ANSI might able to do the same thing that IEEE did.  But the difference is that members of the/usr/group were all institutional members of IEEE, and the style of things we needed to do at the time was really the sort of thing IEEE was already accustomed to doing.  As for the language, since ASA/ANSI was already doing things there - that made sense. BTW: it has been observed that IEEE is behind VHDL - which is a hardware description language.  But against this more in their world -- it pushed to silicon manufacturers, so you know IP can be moved between different fabs.   We can argue that it's a language, and ANSI would have been a good place for it.