• How =?UTF-8?B?QXBwbGXigJlzIE9TIFgvbWFjT1MgQmVjYW1lIOKAnFVOSVjigJ0=?=

    From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@ldo@nz.invalid to alt.folklore.computers on Thu Sep 3 02:24:56 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers

    When Apple introduced the first shipping version of OS X, in the form
    of its OS X Server product (back in March 1999, according to Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0>), it did a naughty
    thing. It advertised it as a rCLUNIXrCY product. But rCLUNIXrCY is a trademark belonging to The Open Group, and can only be used with permission.
    Apple didnrCOt have that permission. The trademark owners responded by
    filing a lawsuit for US$200 million.

    Apple could have responded in one of two ways:
    * License the rCLUNIXrCY trademark. This would require a lot of fixes
    to the OS X code in order to pass the compliance tests.
    * Acquire The Open Group, and thereby gain the rights to use the
    rCLUNIXrCY trademark however they wished.

    The company decided to go for the first option. Here <https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix-compliant-certified/answer/Terry-Lambert>
    is a first-hand account from Terry Lambert, the technical lead charged
    with making OS X fit to be called rCLUNIXrCY.

    The project required a lot of fixes, not just to ApplerCOs code, but to
    a bunch of code from the various open-source projects that Apple had
    copied. I donrCOt think anything Apple has done since then has
    contributed so much back to the open-source world.

    And then there is this article from early last year <https://www.osnews.com/story/141633/apples-macos-unix-certification-is-a-lie/>,
    provocatively entitled rCLApplerCOs macOS UNIX certification is a lierCY. Because it seems The Open GrouprCOs criteria for granting a rCLUNIXrCY trademark licence are, shall we say, somewhat lax.

    First of all, they donrCOt require that you certify against the latest
    version of the spec; an old version, last updated over 20 years ago,
    like the one Apple used, is just fine. And then, they allow you to
    handwave away failures of particular tests if you offer suitable
    excuses -- something Apple has done quite liberally.

    Does the rCLUNIXrCY trademark still mean anything any more? My feeling is
    that Linux compatibility matters more than any legalistic rCLUNIXrCY conformance, and the actions of both Apple and Microsoft nowadays
    indicate that they understand that quite well.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2