In message <Pine.LNX.3.96.1000319222927.1589B-100000@nucleus>, fission writes:
>I have been reading/posting to the comp.unix.admin NG for a bit now and
>recently there has been some discussion over various *nix systems and
>which were (not) Unix.  I already knew that Linux wasn't Unix.  But I
>learned a couple things; namely that to be "Unix" you have to have
>certification and also that NetBSD isn't Unix.  (According to the official
>trademark owners, whoever they may presently be).

>In any case, I got to wondering, "why isn't NetBSD a Unix?"  It certainly
>seems to be a lot more Unix-like than Linux and even some of the other
>real Unix systems I've used.  Has anyone ever looked into obtaining
>certification?  What would be involved?

A very interesting question.

I think the problem is this:  To be UNIX(tm), as I understand it, you pretty
much have to implement *EVERY* syscall ever.  I think the last spec had >1000
"syscalls" you had to support or at least imitate convincingly.

It's just not worth it, I guess.

(FWIW, to the best of my knowledge, neither FreeBSD nor BSD/OS is "UNIX(tm)".)

-s