Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 09:01:19 -0700 (MST) From: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> To: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk> Cc: chat@freebsd.org, terry@lambert.org Subject: Re: POSIX Conformance (Unanswered in "questions" so I forwarded...) Message-ID: <199610301601.JAA03726@obie.softweyr.com> In-Reply-To: <57iv7sy9xv.fsf@tees.elsevier.co.uk> References: <199610292306.QAA22160@phaeton.artisoft.com> <57iv7sy9xv.fsf@tees.elsevier.co.uk>
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Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> writes:
% Note that having access to the NIST/PCTS is not the same as being
% certified. Certification still requires an authorized testing laboratory
% to run the test, and it only applies to a particular release level: the
Paul Richards writes:
> What happens when you apply patches to a certified OS? Is the
> certification then void? Do Sun get each patchlevel certified because
> we run with loads of patches on our systems, does that make them
> non-certified :-)
Sure does. Unless, of course, Sun has gotten their system certified
with the *exact* set of patches you have applied. Not that Posix
certifaction is anything more than a marketing bullet anyhow.
Nobody really cares that a system is *really* Posix-compliant, it is
simply something that gets written into contracts specified by the US
gov't. They require vendors to use Posix-compliant systems, but they
*don't* require them to write their software using the Posix APIs, so
they're still not portable. In many cases, the Posix interfaces
represent a small enough subset of the system functionality that you
*cannot* develop any given application using only Posix calls and get
any real performance out of it.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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