Main Players and Unix Standards.

Main Players and Unix Standards.

The more important players in the Unix scene currently (early '95)
are (corrections most welcome, these are new bytes):

- Novell who bought USL (early 93) and now has the source code.
- X/Open who has the branding rights to "UNIX" trademark.
- OSF, both as developer of OSF/1 and Motif, and as organization
overseeing COSE (OSF's new working model). OSF was reorganized in
1994 (and Sun joined), relationship with X/Open has been formalized.
- IEEE with POSIX, LAN standards.
- PowerOpen [IBM, Apple, Motorola, Bull, others] promoting the PowerPC.
Do not confuse with graphical environment of same name.

The following briefly describes the more important standards
relevant to Unix.

- IEEE:
- 802.x (LAN) standards (LLC, ethernet, token ring, token bus)
- POSIX (ISO 9945?): Portable Operating System I/F (Unix, VMS
and OS/2!) (only ? have been finalized at this point)
- 1003.1: library procedures (mostly system calls) -- roughly V7
except for signals and terminal I/F (1990)
- 1003.2: shell and utilities
- 1003.3: test methods and conformance
- 1003.4: real-time: binary semaphores, process memory
locking, memory-mapped files, shared memory,
priority scheduling, real-time signals, clocks and
timers, IPC message passing, synchronized I/O,
asynchronous I/O, real-time files
- 1003.5: Ada language bindings
- 1003.6: security
- 1003.7: system admin (incl. printing)
- 1003.8: transparent file access
- 1003.9: FORTRAN language bindings
- 1003.10: super computing
- 1003.12: protocol-independent I/Fs
- 1003.13: real-time profiles
- 1003.15: supercomputing batch I/Fs
- 1003.16: C-language bindings (?)
- 1003.17: directory services
- 1003.18: POSIX standardized profile
- 1003.19: FORTRAN 90 language bindings

- X/Open (consortium of vendors, founded 1984):
- X/Open Portability Guides (XPGn):
- XPG2 (1987), strong SV influence
Vol 1: commands and utilities
Vol 2: system calls and libraries
Vol 3: terminal I/F (curses, termio), IPC (SV),
internationalization
Vol 4: programming languages (C, COBOL!)
Vol 5: data management (ISAM, SQL)
- XPG3 (1989) adds: X11 API
- XPG4 (1992) adds: XTI? 22 components
- XOM series of interfaces:
- XOM (X/Open Object Management) generic I/F mechanisms for
following
- XDS (X/Open Directory Service)
- XMH (X/Open Mail ??)
- XMP (X/Open Management Protocols) -- not Bull's CM API?
- X/Open now has the rights to the "UNIX" trademark (late 93);
- "Spec 1170"
- This specification is being prepared describing a common API
to which vendors wanting to use the name "UNIX" will have to
comply (when test suites are available). Merge of SVID,
OSF's AES and other stuff.

- AT&T
(is this still relevant in 1994? Who is now responsible for SVID,
TLI, APLI?)
- System V Interface Definition (SVID)
- SVID1 (1985, SVR2)
Vol 1: system calls and libraries (similar to XPG2.1)
- SVID2 (1986, SVR3)
Vol 1: system calls and libraries (base, kernel extensions)
Vol 2: commands and utilities (base, advanced, admin, software
development), terminal I/F
Vol 3: terminal I/F (again), STREAMS and TLI, RFS
- SVID3 (19??, SVR4) adds
Vol 4: ?? &c
- APIs
- Transport Library Interface (TLI)
- ACSE/Presentation Library Interface (APLI)

- COSE (COmmon Open Software Environment) [IBM, HP, SunSoft, others]:
objective is to bring different Unix platforms closer together.
Initiatives in the following areas:
- desktop environments
- application API (aka Spec 1170 -- a single programming i/f) --
probably the more important achievement at this point: eliminates
differences between SCO, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, UnixWare.
- distributed computing services (OSF's DCE and SunSoft's ONC)
- object technologies (OMG's CORBA)
- graphics
- multimedia
- systems management

- PowerOpen Environment (POE) promoted by the PowerOpen association
(POA). A standard for Unix-like OSs running on PowerPC chip. Defines:
- an API (application programming i/f, derived from AIX, conforms to
POSIX, XPG4, Motif, &c) and
- an ABI (application binary i/f), a distinguishing factor from other
standards such as POSIX, XPG4, &c.. Any POE-compliant system will
be able to run all POE software.
Key features:
- based on the PowerPC architecture
- hardware bus independence
- system implementations can range from laptops to supercomputers
- requires a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system
- networking support
- X windows extension, Motif
- conformance tested and certified by an independent party (POA)
AIX 4.1.1 will be PowerOpen compliant. MacOS isn't and won't be.
[above adapted from the powerpc-faq from comp.sys.powerpc]

IBM is involved in both COSE and POE. How will the two interact?


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