The main points you have raised is regarding differences/similarities between UNIX (R) (TM) and BSD
Though you must understand that BSD is NOT Unix in any sense. BSD has its roots in the version of UNIX that was separately licensed by AT&T to acedmic institutions for free. (This was required since AT&T was not a software development company and was a telecom company) BSD and UNIX had forked out very early in time, and bear no resemblance today.
One interesting thing you might want to have a look at is the UNIX family tree diagram.
http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html
As you might have noticed, the BSD project forked out looong back around 1978 from UNIX System VI
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Originally Posted by tech_your_future
1) Unix is a proprietory OS: - Agreed that AT&T's original unix was proprietory, but few of its derivatives aren't proprietory like BSD's and now, Solaris.
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UNIX != BSD != Solaris != ....
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Originally Posted by tech_your_future
2) Unix isn't free: - Hasn't BSD's been free since a long time(that thread was as recent as 2004)?
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UNIX source license is extremely costly as of today and can be purchased from only
SCO Corporation
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Originally Posted by tech_your_future
3) Unix systems aren't open source: - Aren't there any Unixes that are open source? What about FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, also recently Solaris?
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Now again, UNIX source is not available to anyone without shelling multi billion $$$ whereas the projects which forked out long back do release their source freely.
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Originally Posted by tech_your_future
4) Unix doesn't run on x86 processors: - AFAIK solaris has been running on x86 for quite soemtime as are BSD's not sure about other Unixes. |
Again, UNIX can be ported to any kind of architecture. Projects such as BSD and Solaris have done it themselves. If SCO Corporation wants to port it to intel then it can very well run on intel arhitecture too.
The part of strategy of these big companies is to sell UNIX compatible high end hardware along with UNIX license
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Originally Posted by tech_your_future
5) Unix is referred to as a single OS: - Aren't there different vendors of Unix, now? I've heard of BSD's , Sun's solaris, HP's HPUX and IBM's AIX?
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Now there's a difference. UNIX is a trademark of the SCO Corporation, and only SCO has rights to call their product as
UNIX No one else can call their products as UNIX. For a test, just go to the homepage of AIX / HP-UX / Solaris and try to search for the word UNIX. You will not find a single mention of UNIX there. They are all like UNIX but nopt UNIX itself.
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Originally Posted by tech_your_future
What about Novell's netware is it an Unix? Or am I getting it wrong somewhere?
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Novel's netware is an entirely different class of Networking Operating System, very different from currently popular operating systems in market.