Re: A dumb, somewhat off-topic question...
On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, Alisdair McDiarmid wrote:
> > Mark Wright writes:
> > > Did someone register FreeBSD? If you check out FreeBSD.org, they say
> > > "FreeBSD is an advanced BSD UNIX operating system".
> >
> > They don't need anyone's permission to call FreeBSD UNIX. They aren't
> > selling it.
>
> I don't think that's anything to do with it. BSD UNIX *is* a UNIX
> operating system (Berkeley Standard Derivation or somthing), so it
> is within its rights to call itself UNIX.
Not really. It /is/ BSD, which is directly derived from AT&T UNIX.
However, UNIX is a trademark which an operating system must be branded
with. It involves testing with The Open Group and paying a lot of money to
them for the right to use the name. I tend to refer to *BSD, as well as
commercial Unices, as GNU-like operating systems, while GNU/Linux and (of
course) GNU/HURD are GNU operating systems. Noone owns a trademark on the
term GNU, and anyone but RMS and the FSF would have a rather difficult
time trying to get one, so it should be quite all right to call such
things GNU-like operating systems, rather than labelling them UNIX-like.
--
Jakob 'sparky' Kaivo - jkaivo@ndn.net - http://www.ndn.net/
"As time goes on, my signature gets shorter and shorter..." - me
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