Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!jsq From: sp@gregoire.osf.fr (Simon Patience) Newsgroups: comp.std.unix Subject: Re: recent history of Unix evolution Message-ID: <17631@cs.utexas.edu> Date: 4 Feb 91 16:32:06 GMT References: <17405@cs.utexas.edu> <17405@cs.utexas.edu> Sender: jsq@cs.utexas.edu Reply-To: sp@gregoire.osf.fr (Simon Patience) Organization: OSF Research Institute Lines: 64 Approved: jsq@cs.utexas.edu (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) X-Submissions: std-unix@uunet.uu.net Submitted-by: sp@gregoire.osf.fr (Simon Patience) In article <17405@cs.utexas.edu>, Kevin.N.Broekhoven@QueensU.CA writes: > 2.Similarly, OSF/1 is "currently under development" but is having some problems > getting off the ground. I believe IBM has pulled out of the effort to > develop the operating system, in favour of AIX which works. What are the > dates of: 1.the formation of OSF > 2.the development phase of the OSF/1 operating system > (is it still under development, or has it been abandoned > completely after the pull out by Big Blue?) > What are the Unix roots of the OSF/1 operating system? i.e. was it > developed from System V.2, or Mach from Carnegie Mellon U? OSF/1 1.0 was released for general distribution on December 7 1990. There are no problems that I know of that has prevented it getting off the ground and I was one of the development team. In fact the project slipped only 2 or 3 weeks from its original ship date which is pretty impressive for a project of that magnitude I think. At the general release announcement the sponsors endorsed OSF/1 and many (including IBM) announced that they would be using OSF/1 as part of their operating system technology. The final IBM product could well be called AIX but that is their perogative and a marketing decision I would think. To question 1, OSF, the company, was formed in May 1988. As I said, OSF/1 has already shipped and your information about IBM is incorrect. OSF/1, simplistically, is the integration of Mach 2.5 microkernel and BSD 4.4 but there has been a significant contribution of technology from various sources, IBM, Mentat, Secureware, Encore, to name a few (I apologise to those I have ommited), and of course OSFs own development group. There is a small amount of AT&T System V.2 code in the kernel but not much and it is well isolated. > 4.Is there a competition between System V.4 and OSF/1, in the sense that one > will be chosen as the ANSI standard Unix, or are they both sufficiently > conformant to current ANSI/POSIX standards, that this is not an issue: > that the competition is strictly in the marketplace? As far as I am concerned there is no competition. Both systems support the standard interfaces (POSIX, FIPS, XPG3, ANSI-C, etc) so with respect to strictly conforming application portability the two systems should be identical. Obviously there are other differences, for example in the area of multiprocessor support, threads, dynamic configuration, etc but I will stick my neck out and guess that neither system will be "chosen" by any standards body as the one and only true system. The current status is that OSF/1 1.1 is already under development and likely to be available sometime in the next 12 months or so, I don't know the exact ship date. The system today has already been ported to more that 8 different architectures, including a MIPS R2000, National Semi 32532, Motorola 68030, Intel 80386 and I860, Fairchild clipper and more, I forget them all. DISCLAIMER: This is not an official statement from OSF. Simon Patience Open Software Foundation Phone: +33-76-63-48-72 Research Institute FAX: +33-76-51-05-32 2 Avenue De Vignate Email: sp@gr.osf.org 38610 Gieres, France uunet!gr.osf.org!sp Volume-Number: Volume 22, Number 103