Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

It's definitely partially proprietary, and it is definitely a Unix operating system.


sort by: page size:

It's certified, so I would say it counts as proprietary Unix

Which UNIX isn't proprietary?

Note UNIX, not UNIX like.


Yes, and it’s unix, but it’s not proprietary.

It IS a Unix, not "based on Unix"

It's not more or less UNIX, it is a UNIX. It's certified by the Open Group. See http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3627.htm

It's a very UNIX-like machine.

But it is not Unix.

DEC, SunOS, AIX, HP-UX, etc. were all proprietary. So they weren't Unix either?

Which folks haven't mentioned yet, but z/OS is also a proprietary UNIX, albeit in a very strange way given that it is sorta like a subsystem/different way of looking at the same things, but is also in implemented in the base control program (kernel), so it isn't really a subsystem.

And it isn't the same as AIX. IBM has two alive commercial UNIXs, which is kinda wild.


UNIX was originally a commercial OS…unless by UNIX you mean Linux or BSD. Plus macOS is UNIX too.

IIRC it is actually a certified Unix.

That is based on unix.

The original tiny Version 1 through Version 6 system may have been more or less proprietary (although provided with source for comparatively little money) but the Unix ecosystem hasn't been proprietary for a very long time. Many of the commands people think of today came not from AT&T at all, but from Berkeley.

Even as the commercial Unix platforms split, flourished, and fell apart keeping their own source more or less private Ultrix, Solaris, Irix, AIX, SCO, SunOS, OSF/1, HP/UX, Digital Unix, and others were more or less "Unix" with a few caveats about compatibility. POSIX and the SUS were formed. Systems got certified.

Then the GNU tools were written and Linux became their kernel. Then, the Berkeley vs. AT&T lawsuit ended and we got the explosion of open source BSDs - NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Midnight BSD, DragonflyBSD...

So yes, technically the original AT&T Unix was proprietary. That's not all there is to Unix nor has it been for decades. There is no Single VMS Specification. There are no independent systems certified as VMS compliant. You run what DEC / Compaq / HP / VMS Systems supplies and you like it or you don't. There is no Single Windows Specification. You take what Microsoft gives you or not. Unix is an open standard.


Sorry, I don't know what your point is.

My initial comment was a response to the snarky "proprietary systems suck" comment, saying that UNIX itself was a proprietary design.


Wasn't Unix proprietary and very expensive at the time ?

It actually is Unix, depending on your definition. If you define it as meeting the standard, it is. If you define it as being the same changed code base, it's not.

It's A UNIX System!

It’s not UNIX but it “is” UNIX? That’s kind of all I got out of the about.

Glad to see new OS design in 2022!


It definitely can be, since it's an infrastructural distributed system, but it's all unix when you break it down.
next

Legal | privacy