[Nottingham] POSIX

Jon Masters nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk
Tue Feb 18 17:43:06 2003


On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Gareth Harcombe-Minson wrote:

> Hi, i'm not sure if anyone has heard of this (I've not really) but does
> anyone know what POSIX is?

POSIX refers to the Portable Operating Systems Interface for UN*X
compatible systems, aka P1003.blah (P1003.1 for example defines some very
basic features). Supporters include major UN*X venders, Open and Free
Software, as well as Microsoft (because they can sell to the DoD).

I have the standards documents (one advantage of being a student with
ATHENS access, such as yourself, is that I can download 1K worth of
documents in an evening free of charge and did so in the summer for my
research). Mostly, POSIX is a term that will be thrown about to indicate
some kind of notion of a standard - but mostly it's all bullshit in
reality since people who claim compliance normally (like Microsoft)
actually go with the absolute minimum to get one of the many standards.

;-)

Jon.