Re: Debian + POSIX

[David Frey <david@eos.lugs.ch>]

Hi Bruce,

>Actually, until recently you could only be POSIX compliant by paying
>a lot of money. You paid for copies of the standard, you paid for
>validation software, and you paid for a POSIX compliance lab to certify
>you. So it was a way for the well-funded commercial Linux projects to
>differentiate themselves from high-quality but underfunded efforts like
>Debian. Now, they will have to use the still-costly X/Open standards
>to differentiate themselves.

Just my CHF 0.02:
I suppose that the POSIX-compliance test is relatively cheap[1] in 
comparison
to the XPG4 branding (afterward the branding are allowed to call your 
``Un*x''-clone a ``Unix'' [note the capitalization]).
I don't know how much the POSIX compliance testing actually costs, but
buying the standards is affordable[2] (quoting IEEE 1996 catalog):
                                                       member  list
1003.1b-1993 (POSIX.1, C-API, Realtime extension)      $68.40 $114.00 
1003.2d-1994 (POSIX.2, Shell&Utilities, Amendment 1)   $40.08  $68.00
1003.3-1991  (Test methods for measuring conformance to POSIX)
                                                       $22.20  $37.00
[skipping FORTRAN]
9945-1:1990(E) (POSIX.1, C-API f. Sys. Application C)  $54.00  $90.00
9945-2:1993(E) (POSIX.2 Shell and utilities)          $111.00 $185.00
2003.1:1992    (Test methods for measuring system conformance to POSIX
                part 1: System Integration)            $57.60  $96.60

>NIST developed a compliance test suite for the U.S. Federal Information
>Processing Standard. This is a superset of POSIX. They recently decided
>to make it free, so that more people would implement POSIX. We think
>that's a great idea, and we got right to work.

Yes, I wholeheartily agree.

[1] extrapolating from the standard prices
[2] at least if you are a member, they are still cheap compared to the
    ISO/ITU-T prices...

Thanks,
  David

-- 
David Frey <david@eos.lugs.ch>  |Microsoft isn't the answer...it's the QUESTION.
Schlieren, Switzerland          |``No'' is the answer.
51F35923114FC8647D05FF173C61EFDE|Use Debian GNU/Linux!


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