Page:Login USENIX Newsletter feb1983.djvu/6

 ;login: $5 per copy for overseas postage. The San Diego proceedings may be ordered from: Software Tools Users Group Attn: UNICOM Proceedings 1259 El Camino Real, #242 Menlo Park, CA 94025 The deadline for ordering the San Diego proceedings has been extended to March 31, 1983. Payment for the San Diego proceedings must accompany the order; checks should be made payable to “Software Tools Users Group”. Draft Standard for UNIX— Compatible Systems Available for Review The /usr/group Standards Committee, chaired by Heinz Lycklama, has been working on a System Interface Standard for operating systems that are functionally compatible with UNIX. They now have a draft standard ready for review and have specifically requested comments on the draft from members of USENIX. The purpose of the standard is set forth in the Standards Committee’s statement of purpose: The purpose of the /usr/group Standards Committee is to formulate, adopt, publish, and promote a for- mal standards specification, based on the UNIX operating system, for a commercial operating system. This standards specification is intended to assist persons producing or acquiring products based on the UNIX or functionally-compatible operating systems in accurately predicting the behavior of the products in the context of a specific implementation. The Standards Committee is composed of about 30 members from various segments of the UNIX community. It has members from and has received support from Bell Laboratories. The standard will be based on System III and will attempt to maintain compatibility with Version 7 wherever possible. The effort has concentrated on the original sections 2 and 3 of the System III User’s Manual. Special attention has been given to reducing or eliminating particularly machine- dependent functions. Extensions (facilities not described in AT&T UNIX documentation) have been solicited. One — dealing with the problem of controlling contention between multiple concurrent processes for shared data files (“record locking”) — has been included in the draft standard. The draft standard and a reviewer’s guide are available for review. The reviewer’s guide provides background information, points out important technical aspects of the draft standard, and lists the sys- tem calls and subroutines in the draft along with their System III, Version 7 and 4.IBSD equivalents. The documents are available for $50 per set from /usr/group P.O. Box 8570 Stanford, CA 94305 Comments on the draft must be received by July 6, 1983. The comments will be incorporated into the draft standard to produce a proposed standard, which will be distributed to and voted on by all general members of /usr/group in the fall of this year. [There is a paper in the San Diego Proceedings by Heinz Lycklama, the chairperson of the /usr/group Standards Committee, that describes the workings of the Standards Committee in some detail. ..Ed.] 6 March 1983 Volume 8, Number 1