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(a)skeeve.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(a)rikfarrow.com> wrote: -- *My new email address is mrochkind(a)gmail.com <mrochkind(a)gmail.com>*

The POSIX standard is based on the /usr/group standard which we started in 1981 under /usr/group, and turned into the standard in 1984, which was then turned over to the IEEE under the leadership of Jim Isaac. As the chair of the /usr/group standards effort, we made every attempt to include as many UNIX vendors as possible, systems vendors as well as application vendors. The work of the /usr/group standard was joined by all major computer manufacturers - mainframe, mini-computer, and micro-computer - plus applications vendors who were interested in having their apps run on as many platforms as possible. The members of the /usr/group standard committee also included the vendors of UNIX-like systems who did not have access to the source code for the UNIX System. ISC  (my employer at the time) also developed a UNIX emulation product that ran on the VAX VMS system in 1979. We had an interest in providing a platform for as many applications as possible on the VAX UNIX emulation platform. I do not recall that Govt contracts were a big concern at the time that we started the UNIX standards effort, but it did become a concern over the years. My recall of the UNIX standards beginnings. Heinz On 8/6/2024 11:09 AM, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:

On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 3:05 PM segaloco via TUHS &lt;tuhs(a)tuhs.org&gt; wrote: BS ... the cart is before the horse here. The minicomputer and workstation manufacturers had already picked "UNIX' and we had a term for it already: "Open Systems" - because the sources for the interfaces were open and the core UNIX technology (*i.e.*, the AT&T and BSD sources) were >>freely available<< to vendors, ISVs and even users (but they might have to >>pay<< for a license -- *i.e.*, it was "open" (free as in "libre" but not "free" as in beer). It was not neutral at all. What seems to be forgotten/misunderstood in today's world, the core problem being solved was getting >>ISV<< codes to your system. Thus, the ABI *vs.* API argument. In many ways, the ISVs like the ABIs over the API as it cuts down their tests/number of versions needed -- but if we could create an API that everyone could agree to, that would be neutral - as then the difference for an ISV would be packaging and testing. The concept was "just recompile." ISTR Heinz was one of the people who reminded us on the committee early on that without a real ABI, we would never have as many applications as either the mainframes or the PCs. But no vendor would give up control. AT&T tried to create an ABI and did define one for their System V (I think R2 originally), but as they were so backward /behind in the OS features due to NIH and frankly heavy-handed in licenses and business issues, few vendors trusted them. By the time of SVR4, that was a lost cause. Funny, even Linux never got there, contrary to what it says. This is why Intel has to develop the Cluster Ready Program. I know of one HPC ISV that had a test matrix of 144 different Linux cluster configurations they had tested their code - when you counted, N versions of Red Hat, Ubuntu, SUSE, and then manufacturers: IBM vs HP vs Cray, and everyone had different interconnects. What a nightmare!!! ᐧ

On Wed, Aug 07, 2024 at 06:25:12PM -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote: Around 1994, MIT purchased a site license for a proprietary spreadsheet program for SCO because we knew it would work on Linux (and we had a lot of Linux usage on campus; we had ported a good chunk of the Project Athena infrastruture, including the Andrew File System to Linux). An amusing anecdote; I worked with one of their primary software developers so we could get a custom build of the software that would only work if the IP address of the machine was 18.X.Y.Z, since MIT had class A network. This person would eventually become one of the founders of Red Hat, and I told him that we were purchasing it intended to run it on Linux. He told me that this would be perfectly fine, because he had compiled the iBCS binary on Linux. Turns out the development environment on Linux was far more developer friendly (at least in his eyes) than SCO, so he was building a SCO/iBCS binary on Linux. Since he had done his basic automated regression testing on Linux with iBCS emulation, and only later sent the binary to do QA on the SCO client, he was quite confident that it work just _fine_ on our student's Linux desktops. - Ted

Yes, MSFT and their https://microsoft.fandom.com/wiki/Professional_Developers_Conference were important, especially the 1993 Anaheim one that gave many of us our first real taste of "Chicago." That Brad Silverberg and Steve Ballmer paid special attention to people like me didn't hurt. I suspect Brad deserves even more credit than he gets regarding supporting developers. To keep things vaguely Unix related, that Anaheim conference was after Rick Rashid had moved to MSFT Research. He and I bumped into each other in a gift shop in Fantasyland, and discussed our career changes (I had just left Dell for VTEL). Charlie On 8/8/2024 3:46 AM, Marc Donner wrote: -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer(a)technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/Twitter: CharlesHSauer

A little digging turned up FIPS 151-2: https://web.archive.org/web/20140220130516/http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs… This website also explains Microsoft's desire to support several APIs: https://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-s… Rik On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:04 AM Marc Rochkind &lt;mrochkind(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Theodore Ts'o wrote in &lt;20240807040644.GA4511(a)mit.edu&gt;: |On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 10:31:42AM -0700, Rik Farrow 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. | |That might have been *a* consideration, and that might have been a |reason to take a pre-existing standard work and turn it into something |official such as IEEE. | |There was a similar dynamic at work with the Linux Standard Base, |which was originally an effort (which I was involved in), to create a |ABI standard for Linux. The hope at the time was that this might make |it easier for application vendors to make comercial software available |that would work across multiple Linux distributions --- and in |particular SuSE and Red Hat. | |This work went on for awhile, and we had developed an ABI standard |that worked aross multiple architectures, including (but not limited |to) x86/64, PowerPC, and S/390. At one point, in order to sell into |certain government market (both the US and some European countries), |there was a desire by certain major companies that we take the LSB to |some Official Standards Body (the Free Standards Group, and which |merged with OSDL to form the Linux Foundation wasn't good enough for |government bureaucrats). So I was involved with various corporate |strategists about which standards body would be easy enough to |control; we considered IEEE, ECMA, and ISO. Ultimately the choice was |ISO, and various big companies (including IBM and HP) sent their |employees to various national standards bodies, and I got bunch of |international trips to Europe and Asia, and after a year or two, the |Linux Standard Base became ISO/IEC 23360. | |Of course, keeping an ISO standard up to date took a huge amount of |effort and money, and over time, the requirement from government |buyers that an OS came with an Internaional Standard went away --- and |then my employer at the time, as well as the other major Linux |companies, abandoned the effort completely. | |So while it may have been the case that at one point the US Government |may have had a requirement, and the US Government may have looked down |on plebian standards bodies like Uniforum and the Free Standards Body, |and this might have inspired the $$$$ and effort to get an officially |blessed International Standard, this was very likely *not* the reason |why the stndard was written in the first place. | | - Ted | |P.S. For those of you who heard the controversy of how Microsoft |manipulated the ISO process by stacking the deck with the employees at |multiple countries' national bodies to influence the Office Open XML |File Format (ISO/IEC 29500, previously known as ECMA-376), I can say |quite authoratively that IBM and HP, as multinational, were not above |doing something very similar with ISO/IEC 23360. The only difference |was that it wasn't quite a high stakes, and it didn't result in |appeals up to ISO/IEC JTC like what happened with ISO/IEC 29500. | |But as a result, I'm quite cynical about standards bodies which do |voting by countries' national standards bodies, since I've seen how |easy it is for multinationals to put fairly major thumbs on the scales |to get a desired business outcome... --End of &lt;20240807040644.GA4511(a)mit.edu&gt; Btw how ridiculous is the view onto those Chinese Linux Distributions which put effort in making Linux POSIX compatible, and even pay money for making that official? I personally was *tremendously*, well, pissed, once one of those distributions was (just recently, ie, years later) not allowed to join the encrypted part of oss-security. Too much politics in a non-free world. --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt) | | Only during dog days: | On the 81st anniversary of the Goebbel's Sportpalast speech | von der Leyen gave an overlong hypocritical inauguration one. | The brew's essence of our civilizing advancement seems o be: | Total war - shortest war -> Permanent war - everlasting war

Theodore Ts'o wrote in &lt;20240807234755.GB4511(a)mit.edu&gt;: |On Wed, Aug 07, 2024 at 10:56:14PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: |> Btw how ridiculous is the view onto those Chinese Linux |> Distributions which put effort in making Linux POSIX compatible, |> and even pay money for making that official? | |Well, that's their choice. No US companies that I know of care about |POSIX compliance, so I don't know if any US-based distributions that |are paying money (or more importantly) engineer time, to make it |official. If Chinese distributions are investing resources in that |way, well.... that's there stupidity or maybe, a very good business |choice. :-) | |> I personally was *tremendously*, well, pissed, once one of those |> distributions was (just recently, ie, years later) not allowed to |> join the encrypted part of oss-security. |> Too much politics in a non-free world. | |In the real wrld things get complicated. In 2019 the US put export |restrictions for Huawei, which was interpreted at the time that public |discussions on open mailing lists relating to Linux was totally fine. |But there was some legal interpreations that direct |engineer-to-engineer e-mail might be considered lending assistance |that could potentially run afoul some of the export restrictions. I'm |not a lawyer, but an encrypted distribution to certain chinese |entities might be... complex from a legal perspective. Talk to your |corporate legal counsel for specific legal advice. | |Things are even worse with Russian companies, since the OFAC (Office |of Foreign Assets Controls, at https://ofac.trasury.gov) sanctions are |even more strict. Even if the exchange happens on an open source |mailing list, if the patches come from a sanctioned entity, or an |entity controlled by a sanctioned entity, and the patches say, contain |device drivers used by a Russian SOC that is known to be used in |Russin missiles used against Ukraine (completely hypothetically, of |course...) --- if a US based engineer accepts those patches, that's |considered rendering assistance to a sanctioned entity, and you and |your company have to file paperwork acknowledging that it was done |unknowingly, and the patches need to be reverted. Again, talk to your |friendly neighborhood legal counsel before you do anything with an |entity that may be from Russia, because the OFAC database of |sanctioned entities is constantly changing, and its search functions |are terribly primitive. Thanks for the answer. (I try to be strong and just hope *that* is over soon.) |The joys of being an open source maintainer in the 21st century.... |Not only do you have to worry about trojan horse constributions from |agents of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (ala xz), you also Aaaah! Not north korean, .. they are only out for the money. (And are blocked at github, like i think cuba, iran, whoever.) I see. I did not know that rock-solid argumentation (except for the lengthy commit time sleuthing posts). |have to worry about the US government and OFAC-administered sanctions. Yes i have read "small lip notices" by Kroah-Hartman on oss-security (before Linux "started emitting own CVEs"). That is no fun. Let's just hope we can somehow overcome all that. Good bye, ciao, and good night from Germany. Thanks. Now unfortunately i cannot keep my mouth shut, and it is likely that most people do not want to read this further. But it is all about (the remains of) Unix (aka free software world, mostly, with lots of people spending free time for the very famous https://xkcd.com/2347/) from a red flag waving NetBSD mailing-list, aka tech-pkg AT netbsd.org, from the 4th of April this year, while responding to an (american) email ending "I think we should really discuss this...", and pointing to https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/reflections_on_distrusting_xz, all of which i have forgotten. I apologise in advance. Sorry!!! Short: I am so disappointed that all the opportunities for bashing people have been omitted, like that you do not win wars. [.] jiat75 reads like dschiha:d, and 5.6.0 was shortly before ramadan Isn't it a shame that muslims are not valued enough for being real hacking threats, are they only good enough for kamikaze? (I love what Rainer Maria Rilke said about the Koran btw. In my bad bad translation it reads like "Islam is a 'religion of the undisguised space', of pure creature feeling: earth can be perceived as a 'pure star': 'creatureliness of the earth can appear pure and undisguised'".) And then (i apologize for quoting this, i did not know the maintainer was hm dissed over months) He publically mentioned his mental health issues multiple times, and -- sorry if i got that thread starter wrong even -- that may make people think of Jekyl and Hyde who then gets himself what he is actually worth, with schizophrenically (i am not an expert as you see) raising alert signs to others, like explicitly mentioning mental health issues. That reminds me that the Helter Skelter murders drive 55 today. Longer: I reverted to 5.4.0 locally. I looked at the ~half a dozen commits of jiat75 by then, and they looked good. But AlpineLinux stayed at 5.6.1, they simply autoreconf -vis or what, instead of using anything provided. There are a few hundred commits of jiat, and the poor original developer has to crawl through them. Then again i personally have my doubts and said so in public already. [Does not smell Chinese style imho, they have lots of autonomous regions with a whole lotta different "tribes" aka cultures. Granted the Han are the by far largest sort. But still. I mean, there *are* muslims, ok.] [now it cums. I mean, not that Iran shoots its own ships no more at the moment, as it did under Trump, but the Palestinians are where his son-in-law wanted them .. etc etc etc etc] And jiat75 reads like dschiha:d, and 5.6.0 was shortly before Ramadan, so i think it surely is a small-minded not even christian educated western-style desired-to-be-criminal. ... [*That* still *could* be Chinese nonetheless, of course.] And |One thing we need to discuss for sure is the blame game currently |being played by quite a few parties. "You merged a Jia Tan commit, [btw "jia tan" reads in german like "dschiha:d on", which is a particularly smart name for a chinese secret service guy] |you must be a plant as well!" Personally, I find the danger of that kind of [A German talking. I .. think .. with born-eastern experience, ..] |attitude turning away a lot of volunteers a lot more harmful. Here we are back at the famous https://xkcd.com/2347/. Technically .. well. Well, technically, i think much more sophisticated miracles were already seen in the past, in the end all the software and hardware designs are US controlled. Not that i would have been able to invent it, or even, do it. Now -- I must and wholeheartly do admit that i adore political Chinese cartoons, they still have the black wit that i miss so much in Germany, but which was still present when i was a younger man, say, thirty years ago, snappy cabaret artists like the "forever" unforgotten Dieter Hildebrandt etc etc. https://www.globaltimes.cn/cartoon/ curl --insecure -O https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2024/2024-02-08/d4010c2b-f0… curl --insecure -O https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2024/2024-02-19/fcb05453-26… curl --insecure -O https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2023/2023-04-13/a3d522d5-2a… 300 KB, and i do admit they are very one-sided. | - Ted --End of &lt;20240807234755.GB4511(a)mit.edu&gt; I am sorry, dear Warren. --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt) | | Only during dog days: | On the 81st anniversary of the Goebbel's Sportpalast speech | von der Leyen gave an overlong hypocritical inauguration one. | The brew's essence of our civilizing advancement seems o be: | Total war - shortest war -> Permanent war - everlasting war

typo: Jim Isaak ᐧ On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:19 PM Clem Cole &lt;clemc(a)ccc.com&gt; wrote:

On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:49 PM G. Branden Robinson < g.branden.robinson(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Officially it should be capitalized and as you point out correctly, spelled with a U, so thank you. Dyslexia-r-me. BTW: Rik Farrow says, *"**Wow, they have a web page from the mid-1990s:* http://www.uniforum.org/" ᐧ ᐧ