UNIX "certificates" only mean the OS is compatible with shitty add-ons to a bad 70s AT&T PDP-11 operating system. It has nothing to do with how good the operating system is or whether it meets any requirements besides AT&T compatibility. When you're a monopoly like AT&T, instead of having to compete based on real properties of the system like reliability, code quality, code size, efficiency, system cost, ease of programming, supported languages, user interfaces, libraries, included software, and so on, you can just declare some pile of shit to be a "standard" and force other people to follow your "standard" either by licensing your code or copying the interface. In this case, worse really is better because it makes licensing more attractive than reimplementation. For a more modern example, look at all the bullshit needed to implement a modern web browser. It would take millions of lines even in a good language, not only because of features, but because you have to copy the bugs and misdesigns "just right," and at the end of the day, it still sucks.
Instead of standards being defined by how good they are for the users (who have different uses and opinions on what is good, which is why computer companies used to offer many different computers and operating systems), they become defined by how close they are to a single company's existing code. This is why a multi-user PDP-11 OS based around teletypes and byte at a time tape drives is being used in GUIs, embedded software, and servers even though it makes no sense.
it *was* nice of British Telecom to force Sun to
rename their white pages service to be something other
than "yp") ...
A crying shame too. After all, even though Sun's "yellow
pages" service was really a white pages (name lookup)
service, they should have been able to use whatever
deceptive name they wanted. Renaming things for market
position is really a modern (not just unix) tradition:
Build a presentation manager: call it Presentation Manager...
Build a personal computer: call it The ibm Personal Computer...
Build a machine with an 8-bit byte: Define "byte" to be 8 bits...
Build a IO subroutine package: call it DOS (an OS).
But the unix weenies have refined it to a high art.
Everything must be "open" and a "standard." Why, my company
already supports at least a dozen "standards!"
The latest Sun entry is their new "free" window system.
Their salesman called me proudly: all you need to do is send
them a thousand dollars a copy, plus pay a royalty on
programs which use it, and you can use their new free open
standard window system (called "open look" of course).
Hm, maybe I can add cons to C and call the result Lisp...