Radoslaw Skorupka wrote: >You mentioned several times about source code. IMHO it is irrelevant >for UNIX certification. My understanding is "black box": anything which >behaves as UNIX is UNIX. It can be written from scratch. >Obviously, an access to source code seem to be much easier.
First of all, maybe you missed my other post? There are many outcomes that are hypothetically possible that haven't happened often. To my knowledge there's only one organization and product that has ever achieved UNIX certification without some AT&T/Bell Labs code lineage: IBM with z/OS UNIX. History suggests it was REALLY difficult. There were many previous efforts that never really took off: 1. Somebody was asking about the UNIX subsystem that was available for TSS/370. That was a collaboration with Bell Labs, as this paper from 1984 discusses: https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherports/ibm.pdf TSS/370 UNIX became available in 1980, although (like TSS/370 and TSS/360) I don't think it was ever an "official" IBM product. 2. INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation (ISC) developed a VM/370-based system called VM/IX. 3. ISC's IX/370 was a VM/SP-based version of TSS/370's UNIX, updated with UNIX System V compatibility. (Reference: IBM Announcement Letter 285-048.) 4. I think there was also an IX/360 from ISC, although I cannot find much information about it. 5. AIX/370 was introduced in 1990. (References: IBM Announcement Letters 288-130, 288-131, 289-075, and 289-412. Letter 289-412 also announced the withdrawal of IX/370.) AIX/ESA followed in 1992. (Reference: IBM Announcement Letter 291-544.) 6. Amdahl had UTS, and they started selling it commercially in 1980. UTS notionally survived until fairly recently under UTS Global's stewardship. As far as I know *all* of these efforts were liberally based on AT&T's UNIX source code. Maybe someone has interest in diving into code rescue efforts to see how many of these UNIXes they can recover and reanimate. There could be copyright impediments, though. In 2003 Peter Salus recounted some of the history of INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation as he remembers it (on page 68): https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/issues/login_december_2003.pdf I don't think he has the chronology quite right, though, but that's understandable. I think at least IX/360 must have preceded PC/IX. (Why call something "IX/360" in 1984? Or even 1980?) His recollection that some other team started IX/360 agrees with the other information I found that it started at Bell Labs with TSS/370 UNIX. And did VM/IX fold into IX/370? It's very difficult to get this chronology sorted. - - - - - - - - - - Timothy Sipples I.T. Architect Executive Digital Asset & Other Industry Solutions IBM Z & LinuxONE - - - - - - - - - - E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
