A recent article from newsforge.com, "Can GNU ever be Unix?," examines the UNIXR standard certification and those products that are currently certified. Author Jem Matzan outlines the process involved, then speculates on whether its worth it for a company to certify its product.

The article explains what is needed to achieve the UNIX standard certification. Matzan explains, "Basically you download some test programs and the The Open Group audits the results to ensure that they meet a collection of guidelines on designing a portable, interoperable, networked operating system."

Both time and money figure into the certification equation. While there are many specific requirements, an operating system must meet the following basic requirements for compliance:

• Internationalized System Calls and Libraries Extended V3
• Commands and Utilities V4
• C Language V2
• Internationalized Terminal Interfaces

Cost is a factor as well. Matzan was able to determine that, while the certification cost is dependent on exactly how many units the developer deploys per year, "the range is between roughly $45,000 and more than half a million dollars when the process is finished."

Still, these costs don't necessarily make certification prohibitive for some of the bigger companies. Matzan writes, "For a hardware vendor like Sun or IBM, it would make sense to offer a Unix-certified version of GNU/Linux because they're selling the hardware with the software, thus providing a complete certified solution for customers."

The article describes that, according to The Open Group, UNIX-conformant or certified products have been required by nearly $60 billion in procurements. Matzan is unable to determine whether this trend truly has legs, but he does conclude that there will continue to be a market in selling upgrades and migrations to the current installed base.

Matzan writes, "The enormous advantage of a GNU/Linux or BSD solution would be their superior hardware support, which would allow customers a much more diverse selection of considerably lower-cost products."

For the complete article, visit:

http://os.newsforge.com [...read more...]

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