On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, Alisdair McDiarmid wrote: > > Mark Wright writes: > > > Did someone register FreeBSD? If you check out FreeBSD.org, they say > > > "FreeBSD is an advanced BSD UNIX operating system". > > > > They don't need anyone's permission to call FreeBSD UNIX. They aren't > > selling it. > > I don't think that's anything to do with it. BSD UNIX *is* a UNIX > operating system (Berkeley Standard Derivation or somthing), so it > is within its rights to call itself UNIX.
Not really. It /is/ BSD, which is directly derived from AT&T UNIX. However, UNIX is a trademark which an operating system must be branded with. It involves testing with The Open Group and paying a lot of money to them for the right to use the name. I tend to refer to *BSD, as well as commercial Unices, as GNU-like operating systems, while GNU/Linux and (of course) GNU/HURD are GNU operating systems. Noone owns a trademark on the term GNU, and anyone but RMS and the FSF would have a rather difficult time trying to get one, so it should be quite all right to call such things GNU-like operating systems, rather than labelling them UNIX-like. -- Jakob 'sparky' Kaivo - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.ndn.net/ "As time goes on, my signature gets shorter and shorter..." - me
