Apple Computer is being sued by The Open Group, the San Francisco company that claims ownership of the Unix trademark, for using the term Unix in conjunction with its Mac OS X operating system without a license. Apple has countersued, asking a judge to declare that the trademark is invalid, because the term Unix has become generic. This legal battle, though separate from SCO’s recent claim that Linux uses copyrighted Unix source code, adds further fire to the debate over the custody of Unix–the 30 plus-year old OS originally developed by AT&T.
UNIX’s Courtroom Adventures Continue
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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In Europe (especially in Greece, and even in UK), we refer to any kind of Coke (including Pepsi or other cheaper brands) as “coca-cola”, even if they might not be from Coca-cola. Most people don’t care to make the distinction. In this sense, for many people, “Coca-Cola” is a generic name for this kind of drink.
But for a court room, Coca-Cola Inc. owns the trademark/copyright. If let’s say, Pepsi market their own products as “Coke-based” or “coca-cola-based”, they will get their a$$ sued, and no one will have any trouble understanding that Pepsi did something wrong.
This is similar to the “Unix” trademark IMHO. As long it is still trademarked, Apple had no busines to market their own product as “Unix” and “Unix-based”. They should have purchased a license for this right.
That’s funny. I could swear I remember my local machead saying that MacOS was more UNIX than Linux was because it was officially recognised by the Open Group. Now it seems this isn’t the case?
Oh well. Who cares? UNIX isn’t all its cracked up to be, and MacOS X is a walking disaster of an OS from the internals point of view. There have been much better OS designs floating around the net for a long time now. Too bad people spend their time sueing each other over code that should have been obsoleted a decade ago.
> I could swear I remember my local machead saying that MacOS was more UNIX than Linux was because it was officially recognised by the Open Group. Now it seems this isn’t the case?
It surely is the case. MacOSX is a Unix. But that doesn’t mean that you can use the name “unix” on your marketing materials just like that.
The endless assault of previously unworthy lawsuits has arrived in full force. Anyone who can find a way to make money on the target will now attempt to do so. Just like when the whole retarded .com crap happened. “We’re on the web too! Go to http://www.totallyirrelivantproduct.com!!”
I also like Mike Hern’s comments, above. I’m in 100% agreement.
Oh well. Who cares? UNIX isn’t all its cracked up to be, and MacOS X is a walking disaster of an OS from the internals point of view. There have been much better OS designs floating around the net for a long time now. Too bad people spend their time sueing each other over code that should have been obsoleted a decade ago.
Care to actually back your statements up, or do you just want to troll?
> MacOSX was more UNIX than Linux was because it was officially recognised by the Open Group.
Apple is NOT listed here:
http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/catalog.htm
All these lawsuites won’t do anyone a single bit of good. BIll Gates is laughing all the way to the bank.
Why is it that companies wait months, if not years after claims like this are made before they sue? I seem to recall Mac OS X when it was a ‘dot oh’ product being claimed as being Unix based. it’s not like they just started doing it last week.
to me that should say something. I swear it’s like a bunch of irrelevant companies have started going ‘oh wait, let’s sue folks cuz they are and they’re stock is going up…’
It’s funny… after reading a recent article on SCO and the Open Group and where the copyrights/trademarks really stand, I though to myself, doesn’t OS X advertise as “Unix Based.”
And now… they’re being sued. Humorous.
> It surely is the case. MacOSX is a Unix.
But apparently not an “official” UNIX which is what this guy was saying. Not that I really care anyway. Like I said, being a UNIX based OS is nothing to fight over.
> Care to actually back your statements up, or do you just want to troll?
Sure. Go check out some papers on research operating systems. Let’s see. UNIX is:
* fundamentally C based (ie no real OOP at the API level at all)
* Based on a pretty limited filing system concept, ie a file is simply a stream of bytes – if you look at some of the more advanced OS designs, they are based on concepts like transparent object persistance across storage and network boundaries. UNIX makes you do all this yourself. Files and directories are semantically separate, you can’t treat them similarly. That’s more due to history – originally filing systems were flat. The directory was invented as a new type of file later on.
* There is no standard object remoting system, unlike DCOM on Windows. MacOS has something called “distributed objects” but unlike DCOM it’s not a full component solution, and iirc it’s Cocoa only.
* Even the most advanced shells have an arcane and baroque syntax with highly limited feature set. I know this, I’m trying to write a full packaging framework in it :p
* ELF, the binary standard on virtually all forms of UNIX (but not macos x or AIX interestingly), has a number of misfeatures such as the old-skool static linking symbol scoping semantics. It also provides no framework for binary storage within the files itself, unlike PE on Windows. BTW MacOS X suffers here too, the best explanation for the wierdness of the MachO shlib model I’ve been given is “academics”.
OK. I’d note that Windows and MacOS have similar problems to those given above, as well as strengths/weaknesses of their own.
So let’s take MacOS X, which inherits many of the generic problems found in UNIX and Windows from above:
* MachO is just plain bizarre. The seemingly arbitrary distinction between “plugins” and “libraries” appears purposeless, or at least despite much looking I’ve yet to see a credible explanation for it. No other platform forces such a split on its users, and they don’t suffer for it.
* Plays games with the normally well specified UNIX FS semantics. Of course stuff like KIO/GnomeVFS do this too. For instance, some FS objects appear to be files, at least in the user interface, but are actually directories. Nonetheless, you cannot write to such things.
* A mix of APIs, the implementation details of which are allowed to leak out into the user interface in obvious ways – if I had a pound for every time a Mac user has said “I wish program Foo was a Cocoa app”…. of course on Linux this is a far bigger problem, but the general poorness of modern operating systems compared to the “competition” isn’t really an excuse.
* General NeXT duffness wrt appfolders, which seem to be something of a failed experiment now as many Mac apps come with installers.
I’m sure I’ll get flamed for this, but you’ll note that Windows, MacOS and Linux all get a thrashing from me
Nothing is ever perfect of course.
However, use google power to find out more about OS research, and look for something called Genera from Symbolics for an interesting insight at the competition UNIX faced back in the day. UNIX won out over Lisp machines in the end for the same reason that PCs flattened Macs – they required specialist hardware (lisp-custom cpus), were expensive, proprietary etc etc.
Reading about advanced OS concepts is pretty interesting, it’s too bad there aren’t more articles about them here. Maybe I should write one some time……
The interesting thing here is why is this happening now?
As another poster mentioned, products have been marketed this way for quite some time now, next was marketed this way as a “unix” derivative other os’s such as the favourite nag os , linux, are marketed much the same way.
I am however not as keen as some tinfoil hat trendsetters to come right out and claim this is some wast conspiracy by bill gates but rather a dotcom cashout for the concerned group.
The open group are probably trying to set this as a deterrent to others.
…. not to mention baggage we never even think about that we inherited from history, things like having to manually save documents – why should a user be responsible for manually flushing a memory buffer? So instead of fixing the problem at the OS design level, by having a proper behind-the-scenes object persistance system combined with a more powerful FS, we just hack around it with “auto save” and other such things.
There are quite a few examples of things like that. Stuff we take for granted because everything has always used them. The basic windowing model hasn’t changed for decades due to inertia, the “document <-> application” split has suffered some more attacks, notably from OpenDoc and OLE, but they both failed (ole through general suckyness, OpenDoc through piss poor marketing and general Apple internal politics).
Use your imagination! Operating systems could be sooooooooooo much better today if we weren’t hampered by the fact that to be useful you need to be a corporation with billions of dollars or have millions of volunteers working for you
It’s kind of a shame when people create new operating systems from scratch, and spend years reinventing the monolithic kernel or whatever – it’d be more interesting (and dare I say it productive) to experiment with “operating environments” that take advantage of the underlying operating systems hardware support and play with new ideas. But hey, whatever floats their boat.
Unix is pretty much generic at this point. Really, the Open Group should let it go.
And yes, I use Mac OS X.
>Unix is pretty much generic at this point.
Coca cola too.
Hoover too. (In UK we used to say “let’s hoover the house”, using the Hoover trademark as a verb).
No, the OpenGroup should not let go, sorry. Unix is a registered trademark, as all the above.
…I choose you!!! Get It? Realy, this is going nowhere, just bad PR for *nix OSes, and so on… I use Linux, don’t have $ to buy apple, and Windows does also the job somethimes. So, everything is cool. My guess is that in the future Linux will suffer most improvements, and by the way, Linux doesn’t use the term unix, anywhere, so everything is OK. And yes, UNIX is a generic name now, so, they should let it go…
“No, the OpenGroup should not let go, sorry. Unix is a registered trademark, as all the above”
I see what you’re saying. Well, the thing is the term UNIX is preety generic. Hmm, so, then, instead of calling this OSes UNIX based or whatever, another therm should be used, like…hmm…I don’t know…something to show their common root, or the similarities.
BTW: I like to eat apples, …. , so how in hell where they able to make a trademark out of it? Will they sue me if I will sell as Pear Computers or Banana Computers or even Potato Computers? Who knows, sure they will…
Just my 2c.
>Coca cola too.
Err, nope. “Coke” is. “Coca-cola” is pretty specific, IMO.
>Hoover too. (In UK we used to say “let’s hoover the house”, using the Hoover trademark as a verb).
Again, Hoover is specific. It points to a specific vacuum.
>Unix is a registered trademark, as all the above.
So? That doesn’t mean it hasn’t become generic. “Unix” refers to a broad spectrum of OSes. Coka-Cola, Hoover, no. Those are quite specific. But, Unix refers to a ton of OSes (and, while not officially, OSes compatibal with those): AIX, Solaris, etc.
Sorry, but as far as I’m concerned Unix is very generic. Of course, it’s not up to me to decide; that’s up to the courts.
one of them is to ensure that their trademark does not become generic.
the Open group has not fullfilled that responsability and as such I think that they will lose.
unix
<operating system> /yoo’niks/ (Or “UNIX”, in the authors’ words, “A weak pun on Multics”) Plural “Unices”. An interactive time-sharing operating system invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of {C}, is considered a co-author of the system. The turning point in Unix’s history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972 – 1974, making it the first source-portable OS. Unix subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment. By 1991, Unix had become the most widely used multi-user general-purpose operating system in the world. Many people consider this the most important victory yet of hackerdom over industry opposition (but see Unix weenie and Unix conspiracy for an opposing point of view). Unix is now offered by many manufacturers and is the subject of an international standardisation effort [called?]. Unix-like operating systems include AIX, A/UX, BSD, Debian, FreeBSD, GNU, HP-UX, Linux, NetBSD, NEXTSTEP, OpenBSD, OPENSTEP, OSF, POSIX, RISCiX, Solaris, SunOS, System V, Ultrix, USG Unix, Version 7, Xenix. “Unix” or “UNIX”? Both seem roughly equally popular, perhaps with a historical bias towards the latter. “UNIX” is a registered trademark of The Open Group, however, since it is a name and not an acronym, “Unix” has been adopted in this dictionary except where a larger name includes it in upper case. Since the OS is case-sensitive and exists in many different versions, it is fitting that its name should reflect this. [Jargon File] (2001-05-14)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2003 Denis Howe
There are quite a few examples of things like that. Stuff we take for granted because everything has always used them. The basic windowing model hasn’t changed for decades due to inertia, the “document <-> application” split has suffered some more attacks, notably from OpenDoc and OLE, but they both failed (ole through general suckyness, OpenDoc through piss poor marketing and general Apple internal politics).
Technological innovation is the easy part. Imagination and alot of money. It’s cultural innovation that is pretty fucking hard. Heck, the majority of computer users still use Windows 98. Like it or not, evolution is pretty much the only option, with the occasional small revolution. Windows 3.11 => Windows 95, Macos9 => OSX…
From the article “The Open Group wants Apple to have Mac OS X undergo testing to certify that it complies with its standards for software bearing the Unix name”
Problem is that Mac OSX will probably not comply to the standards and to make it comply it will probably mess up th system. (NO I really don’t want a X windowed system with CDE)
The Fee is $110,000 which is a lot less then what this court room battle is going to cost, but making OSX a certified Unix?
Yes it is Unix based so is a lot of products that are not listed in the registered products area. I do not see any Linux, any of the BSDs.
Apple just just pull any reference to Unix
What’s the laws on case-sensitive vs non-case-sensitive stuff? Like the Open Group owns the trademark to UNIX (all caps), does that “Unix” or “unix” or “uNiX” (heh) can be used without infringing the trademark?
Come on Apple, even I knew that you can’t officially call something UNIX without licensing it from the Open Group…why do you think the *BSDs and Linux distros refuse to let themselves be called Unices.
I just assumed that they had registered themselves before they started that ad campaign.
Silly apple…Unix is for SCO and HP and IBM and Sun…
Can you update the story to this important flashback?
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/9451.html
This article shows that the opengroup has failed to defend their tradmark for over 2 years. What does this mean? It means that this is a direct result of SCO’s actions. I believe that the Opengroup is beginning now because they may have to face-off with SCO.
The bottom of the article contains this gem:
http://www.unix-systems.org/what_is_unix/single_unix_specification….
So it looks like Apple can legal say, “Mac OS X built on the rock solid ‘UNIX Specification'”. Look at the link, they are on the list!
If Apple is suppoed to buy a license, I think that’s what they should do. But, it is discouraging to see these borderline frivolous lawsuits…mostly people looking for easy money. “Unix” borders on being generic. After all, we even have made-up words like “unices” and “*nix”.
But, Apple should do the right thing and become a licensee. I’m sort of surprised Apple’s counter-suing – why not just get a license so you can go about your business in peace?
In Europe (especially in Greece, and even in UK), we refer to any kind of Coke (including Pepsi or other cheaper brands) as “coca-cola”, even if they might not be from Coca-cola. Most people don’t care to make the distinction. In this sense, for many people, “Coca-Cola” is a generic name for this kind of drink.
I wouldn’t say Coca-cola is generic in Europe, though Coke certainly is in the United Kingdom. I remember having this argument in a shareware authors newsgroup. No matter how hard you argue, or however much evidence you present, getting this past some people is impossible, especially Americans who forget there’s a world outside their borders.
Again, Hoover is specific.
No. Hoover is a generic term for vacuum cleaner or vacuuming, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It’s well documented and has been the subject of several court cases.
As far as I’m concerned, UNIX is a generic term for Unix or Unix like operating systems, including the BSD’s and Linux, etcetera. No damn court case is going to change my mind either. Better they start change their certification to something like “Open Unix” and think of ways to propel the certification process than go down the “we can’t run a successfull business so we’ll screw the IP route.”
I thought OS X was based on BSD 4.4 anyway? I don’t remember BSD being Unix, it’s similar but was created as an alternative.
I’m not sure. Read this:
http://www.opengroup.org/legal.htm#trademarks
This is why we need a loser pays system. It would make people think twice about filing lawsuits.
Let’s pretend we have a loser pays system.
Is it a big enough deal for this group to risk a lawsuit? Is this hurting them in any way? If it is and they think they have an air tight case.. then they go for it. If they are unsure and are just doing this for what ever other reason they lose and have to pay all of apple’s legal fees.
Firstly, this case was started a while back. The SCO flap has nothing to do with it except in regards to the pathetic media. For pathetic media types, they are like: “oo, a Unix story… People like to bash Apple… Let’s light this one up again even if no one has given a crap for the last year.”
Okay, now, as far as I understand, Apple conforms to the Unix spec.
They do not conform to the Unix API spec.
Apple has no interest in claiming to be a Unix (it doesn’t offer the clout that it does for enterprise apps like AIX, Solaris, etc…) They do not want to have to undergo testing everytime they change the OS. They do not want to include the Unix APIs. There is no reason to. But, they are trying to promote the strengths of Unix.
Clearly, Unix does have a generic application. Clearly the OG hesitated for some time re: Apple. THe osopinion article states their own position as enforcing when they feel the name is used counter to their intentions… well, guess what: that’s bad trademark enforcement! They’ve got to enforce it all the time, no matte what. They can’t accept the good sometimes and litigate the ones that are iffy.
Since being granted the trademark is predicated on testing that Apple doesn’t want to conduct, why should Apple participate.
The only problem I see with Apple’s position is when they say they are the largest vendor of Unix, and such. As long as all of the materials and references are to Unix-based, based on Unix technologoies, etc… I see nothing wrong.
But it’ll be interesting… Maybe Apple can invalidate the UNIX trademark the way I hope that Lindows can invalidate Windows.
I think UNIX has become generic and that’s after reading hundreds of articles where it was used as a generic term.
I don’t think they will win because they waited so freaking long to sue and because Lindows won and its not too different. They won because windows is a generic term.
For example, everybody already refers to tissues as Kleenex and photocopies as Xeroxes. However, try calling your facial tissues Kleenex or saying that your product makes Xeroxes, and you’ll get yourself sued quickly. UNIX has a very precise definition. A UNIX system has to obey certain specifications and pass conformance tests. If you don’t pass these tests, then you don’t get to call yourself a UNIX. Also, note that, unlike SCO’s IP, the exact ownership of the UNIX trademark is not in question. Owning a trademark requires that people associate a name with your company (certainly true of UNIX, at least to those in the industry) and that the company or person actively take steps to protect the trademark. Again, this is true of the UNIX trademark (note how both FreeBSD and Linux take steps to avoid calling their OSs UNIX).
Lindows hasn’t won anything yet. The battle awaits. In fact, I believe this case (Open Group v. Apple) was started first and will probably be decided first.
That’s a good point, Rayineer, but I think the issue is whether or not they have pursued protecting their mark in every instance.
For that matter, Apple isn’t calling their product UNIX. They aren’t referring to Unix in any product names.. so the question is: does Apple’s usage of “Unix-based” rise to the level of usurping the mark “UNIX”? That is: they aren’t using it as a mark themselves, they are using it as a generic descriptor. This is where generic plays in–Apple’s claim is they don’t care to use the mark, they want to make a general refernce to the underlying tech and heritage of their system.
I find the idea that NeXT referred to itself similarly particularly intriguing. If they had, and the OG didn’t pursue a claim against them at that time–the OG has allowed their claim to be diluted.
The reason Hormel has never sued any software vendors that advertise “anti-spam” capabilities or that have the word “Spam” in the names of their products, according to Hormel’s own Spam site (http://www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm) is due to capitalization and the belief that use of the lower-case term doesn’t weaken their trademark on the all-capitalized SPAM.
UNIX is a trademark.
Unix is the generic.
The Open Group’s web site even says you have to put the word in all caps. Thus the question is: Did Apple say “Mac OS X is UNIX based” or “Mac OS X is Unix based”? The difference is major: the 1st means that Mac OS X is based a registered version of UNIX; the 2nd means that it is UNIX like.
It’s hard to create a new OS that differs dramatically from what’s in the field today simply because of the net effect running against it.
BeOS was the most recent struggle for this, it had novel features, etc. but still failed.
All of the features of the OS are represented through applications, so applications will drive the OS.
Also, many people today are “computer literate”, which a really meaningless term. They’re actually Windows/Mac/Unix literate. Throw a “computer literate” person in front of a Lisp Machine and they’ll just flatline and glaze over.
But in order for a machine going to market, it needs to leverage that “computer literacy” in order to become productive quickly.
One place where this was less important in the past was the blossoming PDA market. There you were able to explain the device. “It’s a address book, calendar, note pad thing”.
Nobody today sells a “Web browsing, word and digital image processing, MP3 playing” machine. That’s why people buy them, but that’s now they’re sold, or described, or documented (although to be fair, Apple is coming close to this in their marketing and product structure).
Look at the novelty of the system underlying the Apple Newton. Pretty cool crafty system. Easy for 3rd parties to integrate into etc. None of this infrastructure was disclosed to users, rather they simply described “here’s the notepad, address book, and calendar”.
The infrastructure is a boon to developers, but not end users. Windows has all sorts of neeto things, and few programs take advantage of all of them because the developers chose not to expose that functionality.
There’s no reason someone couldn’t write an office suite with all of the things that Mike mentioned. All the stuff Jef Raskin (The Humane Interface) talks about can be emplaced today with little direct OS support, but obviously it’s a lot of work for the developers, and it doesn’t integrate with other applications on the same OS.
So, get the application designers to start charting new ground (and watch them get pummeled by pundits etc). Unix is a reasonable foundation for all sorts of abstractions. Windows gets pushed forward by the MS application guys. “Let’s get this into the OS, so we can all use it better.” Remember, MS is an Applications company, not an OS company. Always has been.
but that’s not the complete issue. It’s not that simple. For example, they refer to OS X as UNIX-based.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/unix.html
But you aren’t supposed to do that if you are a trademark holder. (See previous link)
But Apple also refers to UNIX applications. What is Apple supposed to do if they intend to describe these Apps? In this case it’s clearly generic. Changing the caps doesn’t change anything (or they would).
because they did try to pursue preventing UCE being referred to as a spam.
They thought that it hurt their image (like that’s possible) and that it could be construed as dilutive.
That’s what’s interesting about your link: the precedent in which mass usage is not necessarily dilutive to the trademark. Now this precedent seems to particularly refer to “slang” but the fact is Unix, Unix-based, Unix underpinnings, Unix-like appear all over the place. This does not necessary dilute the mark, but neither does it constitute trademark infringement in my mind, to my understanding.
I really think the most important issue (though Apple has counter-sued for invalid trademark, same as Lindows) is whether or not Apple is trying to usurp the mark. For example, check out: http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/compatibility.html
Apple never uses (TM) for Windows. But they say: “Works with Windows”, “use your Mac in a Windows-centric world”, “works well with Windows-managed remote networks”, “Windows users can connect to your Mac”, and on and on… This is not infringement I would presume because they are simply describing their product. They aren’t naming their product by the trademarked name. So isn’t this the same as how they are using UNIX?
The difference is that you don’t see brand-x-cola selling their stuff by saying, “this is a coca-cola…”
>Unix is pretty much generic at this point.
Coca cola too.
Hoover too. (In UK we used to say “let’s hoover the house”, using the Hoover trademark as a verb).
No, the OpenGroup should not let go, sorry. Unix is a registered trademark, as all the above.
A little while ago, Apple had the nerve to sue a company for selling computers that looked like one of their products. On the other side, they have been dragging their feet instead of paying the OpenGroup their due money. Talk about a lack of honour…
I can understand enforcing trademark, but if all Apple ever said is that OSX is Unix-based, not a Unix, then they are right. To legally call themselves a Unix they need the right to the trademark, but to say they are based on Unix, which is 100% true, should never be illegal.
I am not so much angry at SCO for this as I am at the law if they get away with it. Something that is true should never be illegal to say or print.
“The OpenBSD project produces a FREE, multi-platform 4.4BSD-based UNIX-like operating system.”
From the OpenBSD site
“NetBSD is a free, secure, and highly portable UNIX-like operating system available for many platforms”
From the NetBSD site
“FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible, DEC Alpha, IA-64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC architectures. It is derived from BSD UNIX, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley.”
From the FreeBSD site
Apple had valid patents on the design of said computer. OG is picking and choosing who they want to go after for subjective reasons… Trademarks cannot be enforced subjectively. This lacks honor as they are going after the deepest pockets for emphasizing and popularizing the strengths of UNIX.
Windows is a generic real world term. Although I guess Apple is too. UNIX however is not a generic real world term.
That is my guess any ways
>Again, Hoover is specific. It points to a specific vacuum
No, I ofton say “hoover the floor”, but have never owned a Hoover vacum cleaner.
The generic exception ahs to do with whether or not the term is generic to the vocabulary of the product’s market.
i.e. I can’t call my company Tire Co. if I produce tires because it prevents competitors access to a genric term.
The issue over Windows is not decided, but the argument is Windows are a genric and commonly used term in GUI systems.
Apple is not generic. When have you ever “appled” your computer or trashed your “apple”? Apple in this case is a unique product name. And because of this situation: where a unique term is being applied in a novel way to a marketplace which doesn’t use the term “apple”, you can have multiple companies with the same term in their mark, i.e. Apple Computers and Apple Records. (Of course, this raises an issue if and when these two companies compete, but nevermind that…)
UNIX is a novel name but it has been used generically in academic circles for years to apply to a type of architecture. It has a generic application. This is how Apple is using it.
I hope that clears things up, but I suspect it didn’t.
(#1 Pet Peeve in the tech world: when people say: Apple is generic, Oracle is generic…. Errrrrrr!!! You just don’t get it!)
MacOSX is a Unix.
Not if it doesn’t pass the testsuite for UNIX98 certification. And this is exactly why the Open Group is refusing to give the right to use the “Unix” name to Apple.
It’s not the Open Group’s fault if Apple are so clueless as to not being able to make MacOS X fully UNIX compliant.
“The difference is that you don’t see brand-x-cola selling their stuff by saying, “this is a coca-cola…” ”
But they do say cola. Coke attempted to claim they had the rights to cola, but failed because all of the drinks used the cola ingredient in their product. (They just didn’t use Cocaine.)
So it is Pepsi Cola.
And we are talking about Apple using UNIX in descriptions. Show me an Apple product with UNIX in its name. Please. What product produced by Apple is blankety-blnak UNIX?
And we do see numerous other systems referring to themselves as UNIX-like or UNIX-based without being litigated… Why not? What is OG’s stance that justifies a singular action against Apple when it hasn’t pursued others for many years?
“MacOSX is a Unix.
Not if it doesn’t pass the testsuite for UNIX98 certification. And this is exactly why the Open Group is refusing to give the right to use the “Unix” name to Apple.”
Apple isn’t claiming X is a UNIX. They are saying it is based on Unix technology. Big difference.
“It’s not the Open Group’s fault if Apple are so clueless as to not being able to make MacOS X fully UNIX compliant.”
Please. Pathetic slander. Apple has no interest in conforming to a meaningless spec. They have no interest in testing their OS every time they update it. If Apple wanted this certification, they could meet it.
To the contrary, I would propose Apple is so f’ing full of clues (Apple is very handy in court with respects to TM, copyright, and patent issues) that they fully pursued how their marketing materials would hold up in court. I’m sure they are all fully aware of what the BSDs have done in terms of their usage of the term UNIX (without being specified) without facing prosecution.
Silly, silly, Mario. Apple’s got a clue. Do you?
hmm.. I see what you’re saying.
Basically what you’re saying is that it’s subjective? At what point does your trademark become useless? How long does a term have to be used ‘a lot’ in academic circles for it to be useless?
Guess this is why IANAL
I think the point is clear… Apple does not advertize OS X as a Unix operating system. It advertizes it as a “UNIX-based” operating system, which is entirely correct. Mach was based on 4.2BSD, and FreeBSD is now based upon 4.4BSD Lite 2, both of which are Unix distributions.
This is Apple’s argument as well:
“Apple accurately uses the generic term Unix merely to identify or describe an aspect or feature of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. This is consistent with past and current industry standards.”
Of course none of us are lawyers (right?) so debating this here is rather moot…
” * A mix of APIs, the implementation details of which are allowed to leak out into the user interface in obvious ways – if I had a pound for every time a Mac user has said “I wish program Foo was a Cocoa app”…. of course on Linux this is a far bigger problem, but the general poorness of modern operating systems compared to the “competition” isn’t really an excuse.
The “competition” is hardly any better in this regard. The fundamental and functional differences between VB apps, Win32 apps, Win16 apps, MFC apps, and .Net apps is quite obvious.
The problem with the “competition” is that it took them until just recently to provide a dev environement to its MASSIVE developer community that could even come close to calling itself a modern OO development platform. Then on top of that they didn’t even implement many of what I’d consider basic OO paradigm features.
I don’t dislike the “competition” because they make bad products, I dislike them because they have 100 times the resources of any other software company on the planet and yet they still don’t make software that is often even on par with other methods which have been available to users/developers who use platforms not built by the “competition.
Torrey, it’s not subjective at all.
It’s a question of whether or not the word is a generic term within the vocabulary of the product.
For example, Kleenex was so popular that it became a genric term to refer to facial tissues. However, this doesn’t invalidate the validity of its mark.
However, a term like UNIX is generic and has value and need as a term within the computing vocabulary. People cannot be prevented from saying that “XYX Operating System is built with a base of UNIX technology.” This is a meaningful use of a generic term that can’t be denied to competitors.
Mmmmm, I don’t know… Don’t get why people never understand this… Don’t think I’ll ever come upon a sure fire explanation that works…
I can’t remember who made it, but the point of innovation in operating systems was a really good one. The problem is that different isn’t always better, it can be just different. Likewise, people don’t like radical change. Look at how long it took people to pick up GUI’s over CLI’s.
In terms of the SCO and OpenGroup cases, this is playing right into Microsoft’s hands. All that is happening is that we are taking our eye off the ball–Microsoft. That is the intent of all these actions, and the end result is even more MS dominance as more and more features are co-opted by Microsoft and less and less innovation occurs on the alternate operating systems.
Resistance is futile.
Hank, think of it this way. The AT&T v. BSD case really didn’t clear anything up. But by the end of this, more or ALL of UNIX could be freed from copyright and patent ownership. The name will no longer be a trademark, etc…
This could provide a wealth of code and publicity in the long run to the public.
And Microsoft will have bought an expensive but useless license, lost the rights tot he mark Windows, and have supported the wrong side–SCO, a company that had sued MS–all to prove a point that will be invalidated–that IP needs to be proprietary and secreted away.
Do I think this is going to happen? Who knows, but we’ve still got our eye on MS… I don’t see them getting away with anythign they aren’t already getting away with…
In responce to your first comment. You are a right to a degree, Coca-Cola is owned by the Coca-Cola Corp. However when a product name becomes so over-used that it becomes the “generic” name, the corporation may lose its right to that name. For example, a “thermos” was originally a product name, however it lost its trademark and is now a generic name, and anyone may make a thermos.
Xerox was in danger of losing its name a few years back, because “xerox” became a verb, ie. “i’m gonna xerox this document.”
It is my belief that Apple may win its claim that UNIX has become so Generic that there is no trademark.
Just my two cents on the intellectual property law that applies.
What’s the laws on case-sensitive vs non-case-sensitive stuff? Like the Open Group owns the trademark to UNIX (all caps), does that “Unix” or “unix” or “uNiX” (heh) can be used without infringing the trademark?
No, a court would find UNIX to be the same as Unix, unix, or uNiX, because it causes customer confusion and tries to profit off of that.
Again, intellectual property stuff, IANAL.. but I will be going to law school
Maybe TOG should start a “Genuine UNIX” logo/certification campaign similar to Intel Inside. That would settle this Apple thing, along with Linux and BSD. People might actually notice, start asking “hey, is this OS genuine UNIX?”
Then again, it must be a thrill talking on the speaker phone to attorneys every day.
april_fool, that’s exactly what they do. The question is what is their claim against Apple if they are only doing what others have done for years.
But OG specifically does certify Genuine UNIX.
Where’ve you been?
This is the only way that American companies can turn a profit these days.
Oh thanks, the news takes awhile to get to where I live.
It’s complicated, however the truth bears on the matter of apple’s intent. That much we can be assured of. I know the claim by SCO is totally baseless, and furthermore, lacks burden of proof to compare to allegations against the linux community.
Did apple intend to say their product is UNIX class performance, or “a real unix” or did they say OS X is UNIX. I know anytime you use a term like that in official documents, it’s wise to add who the copyright holder is somewhere in the document. Windows is a wholly owned trademark of Microsoft, etc.(or is it? haha.. go back to openwindows days..)
Like I said, it’s complicated…
Then “Windows, Win, etc” are also invalid. Of course, they are less valid anyhow. Openwindows, remember?
Really, it was clearer when people stole each other’s work outright, like is being claimed to a greater or lesser extent in the Be vs Microsoft case.
Fascinating stuff. Tough one, I mean, Open Group would kind of have to go after this thing every single time it’s an issue for it to really have weight. Apple would certainly do that (and does) with trademark infringement issues. The smallest instance is stamped out right away so clear boundaries are set.
Beyond that, I personally don’t fault Apple for this, because of the nature of it, I think their counter-suit is valid enough. Kind of a grey area, I mean, UNIX really has become a sweeping term for a certain kind of OS.
Sure, they may pay a license when all is said and done, but it’s worth playing it out to see how the courts define the use of the term in this case.
Oh well, I guess I’ll go drink my carbonated beverage now…
…should just bend over and smell our shorts 😉
Seriously! I can imagine if they INVENTED UNIX, but they did not, not to mention the fact that the UNIX community has been strengthened by the fact that there are so many UNICES out there producing FREE work for the OS….the SCO group should be thankful….personally I hope they do really bad, their stock drops to bellow zero and they go out of business. This way a consortium (Red Hat, SuSE, Apple, Sun, IBM, SGI…etc etc) can govern the UNIX thing…. jeez…give it a rest SCO!
American corporations are all criminal organizations.
It doesn’t matter how common a term becomes in everyday usage. The issue is when a competing company uses it’s trademark, slogan, whatever, as a marketing tool.
“pass me a kleanex” or “hoover the living room”, or “I’ll have a Coke”, or “my discman needs new duracells”… whatever. Can’t punish a company for having it’s products being popular enough that they become a cultural reference.
at least that’s my take
It’s not the Open Group’s fault if Apple are so clueless as to not being able to make MacOS X fully UNIX compliant.
Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance. Apple did’t claim OSX was Unix. They said OSX is Unix based, and it is! It uses parts of FreeBSD, which are based on BSD Unix, thus it is technically true that OSX is Unix-based.
SCO goes after Linux for having UNIX code = Wrong.
but..
SCO goes after Apple for marketing OSX as UNIX-based = Right?
Hypocrites.
BillG will smile at the least
Greg, did you read the article? SCO isn’t going after Apple. The Open Group is. Before you pass judgement on anyone, get the facts.
I was talking to those who are posting.. I didn’t mean to put “SCO” in the Apple line.. was a typo.. which is why OSNews needs a review option.
“In responce to your first comment. You are a right to a degree, Coca-Cola is owned by the Coca-Cola Corp. However when a product name becomes so over-used that it becomes the “generic” name, the corporation may lose its right to that name. For example, a “thermos” was originally a product name, however it lost its trademark and is now a generic name, and anyone may make a thermos.
Xerox was in danger of losing its name a few years back, because “xerox” became a verb, ie. “i’m gonna xerox this document.”
It is my belief that Apple may win its claim that UNIX has become so Generic that there is no trademark.”
Hoover IS a trademark. Whether you use it as a generic term is irrelevent. It’s still a trademark and refers properly to a PARTICULAR brand of vacuum cleaners. Coke is ALSO a proper trademark and was registered in 1945. Whether it’s used as a generic term is irrelevent. When you say Coke everyone knows which particular brand you’re talking about, even if it’s just referring to some generic Cola drink. These trademarks are defended.
A good case of one which was not properly defended is purple. According to stories I’ve been told, purple was the last name of someone who invented a violet dye. It eventually became the color.
IF this is true it would be a case of not enforcing a trademark. One could of course also argue that this is also an example of people not being nearly as anal in the past as they are now. This might also be due to different laws back then as well. I’m sure he’d have no real rights in feudal Europe so there’d be little hope of him enforcing a trademark anyway, unless he were already connected and/or wealthy. I suppose the situation hasn’t changed all that much if you think about it….
I think Thermos may also be one of those that was not properly defended as I have seen ads for other companies selling thermos bottles. *shrug* In any event, it’s up to the trademark holder to defend it. But they do have to do so whenever they are aware of it, or the trademark is invalid.
I’ve got a NEW softdrink:
Dew
or maybe M Do. Yeah!
I really don’t see “Coca-Cola” being generic. Maybe “coke”.
Myself, I’m a Pepsi drinker, its like pop for the gods. Coke sucks. I go out to eat:
waitress: “Can I get you a drink?”
me: “Pepsi”
waitress: “Is Coke OK?”
me: “Yeah, its ~OK . . . but I asked for a Pepsi. What else do you have, I don’t drink Coke.”
It really pisses me off when people try to turn words generic. If I want a god-damn pepsi, I *really* want a god-damn Pepsi!!! Not a fucking “coke”.
Another thing; their not VICE GRIPS _UNLESS_THEY_HAVE “VICE GRIPS” printed on them – they are “Adjustable locking pliars”. sheesh.
HOOVER????? How the hell’d that get generic???? Heh, I thought brits had taste (I would have pegged them for Kirby users). I would say Hoover sucks but . . .
The one that ***REALLY*** gets me but will NEVER go away is “PC”. When the hell did a PC absolutely mean “IBM compatable” or “Intel Only”. Hell for years most software even said “IBM or Tandy 100% compatable”.
I think ATARI is the 1st company to actually market the term “PC”. IBM FLAT OUT DETESTED THE USE OF THE TERM “PC” for a time (“Its a “”WORKSTATION””, nothing about a computer is personal”).
JTS corp bought and split and sold Atari. Midway owns most the arcade stuff; some german company owns the rights to the st/tt/falcon “technology” and Infogrames owns the rest (I believe).
Since Infogrames is french maybe they too can sue every last PC maker in the US??? That could surely help their economy and image? Wouldn’t that be fun.
None of this matters people.
Opengroup has a page listing how to use the UNIX trademark:
http://www.opengroup.org/trademarks.htm
Apple has a few key problems:
1) BSD is *not* UNIX (neither 4.4BSD-lite or Mach or FreeBSD, which together comprise the OS X kernel). There was a court case over this. Extreme-tech has a nice blurb about this: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,555444,00.asp
2) As a consequence of (1) Apple cannot claim OS X is UNIX-based, because BSD isn’t UNIX either.
3) Apple capitalizes the word UNIX, which, according to the OpenGroup, implies the distinguishing UNIX as a trademark rather than a generic term.
4) Apple does not use any qualifiers on UNIX. For example (on their main OS X page), they claim that OS X is a “state-of-the art BSD UNIX implementation,” and say that OS X has the “power of UNIX.” These two statements in particular seem to cross the line between using UNIX as a generic term and using the UNIX trademark.
5) This one is the kicker: Apple is clearly trying to capitalize on the UNIX name and reputation. They use it *8* times on the main OS X page, including once on a silver metal logo. They have an entire page on the OS X site about “the power of UNIX.” It’s listed as a big feature. Now, Apple clearly realizes that the UNIX name has significant value. Now, if Apple want’s to make their product stand out by using the valuable UNIX name, shouldn’t they pay the licensing fee to do so?
This is why everything is so much money these days. From insurance to software. Fraud, waste, and abuse – that’s all the suit is. A WASTE. They should consentrate more efforts on making better software. We’ll NEVER be like “Star Trek” if we keep bickering.
I can understand the open group point of view.
SCO it seems is on a lawsuit filing marathon lets
see they are suing IBM, Novell, linux.
I kinda wonder who is next bsd or sun maybe I hope
for the sake of the open source community that all these
lawsuits will be settled soon.
Since Apple loves to religiously defend it’s product line, trade marks, and everything Apple. I find it remarkable that they don’t understand why The Open Group objects to their use of a logo bearing the words “Unix Based.”
Unix isn’t a generic word, it’s a trademark and there is a standard that has to be met in order to call an OS Unix or Unix Based. Now Apple’s marketroids must have thought that Unix is cool otherwise why bother to try and associate OS X with Unix. If being Unix-like is cool, and OS X is Unix-like, then it logically follows that OS X is cool. It wouldn’t have quite the same effect if they were to try and sell it as “BSD Based” or “MACH Based” or even “NeXT Based”. I doubt that their intended audience, MAC-heads like those in their switcher ads, know what BSD, Mach or NeXT are. Could they even remotely define what an OS is? They don’t care as long as it’s (in order of importance) pretty, cool, by Apple, and mostly works sometimes.
I remember asking several Mac/PC users in the early 90’s what they thought about Unix and the usual response was, “It’s too difficult to use.”, “You gotta be a rocket scientist to use it.”, “Too scary for me!” How times have changed – today it’s not so diificult or scary to use and even has a coolness factor (SCO Unix excluded).
Now this topic really doesn’t matter. Not a single product will change in any way regardless of how this lawsuit comes out. The SCO mess is a real issue (although, God willing, SCO should lose quickly).
PLEASE HELP!
We are a group of young programmers who have decided to write the next *NIX like incarnation, the one for the 21st century and beyond. Although we have not written one line of C yet, our lawyers are almost ready to copyright the name. Our problem is simple: all the members of our group came up with names, but we are not sure which one would be right.
Please help us! Give your feedback or even better, offer your suggestions! If your name is selected, we promise we won’t forget you (in 20 years) when we sue the whole planet for copyright infringement (yes! you’ll get a piece of the bounty).
1. ASSUNIX Asymmetrical Super Scalar *NIX
Issue: well…
2. NOTSOUNIX: New Open Transcendental Scalable Objective *NIX
Issue: might be understood the wrong way.
3. PRISUNIX, Practical Replicative Industrial Strength *NIX
Issue: A European developer told us that it sounded like a chain of stores in Freedom Land.
4. SNAFUNIX, Sophisticated New Alternative For *NIX
5. REDTUNIX, Real Economical Distributed Total *NIX
TIA!
I was surprised how long the opengroup had sat by whilst MacOS X was called a UNIX. Anyway, I hope that Apple crush the OpenGroup whose purpose has been nothing but grabbing money of businesses for the sake of proping itself up.
Btw, anyone remember the ActiveX saga when Microsoft used the OpenGroup to make it an openstandard?
Btw, what is going to happen next? Microsoft starts suing people who use the term windows when describing a number of windows on their desktop?
OpenGroup does servce a purpose, but this is just straight out nit-picking for the sake of Apple shelling over a pile of cash so that they call give Apple the “UNIX Blessing”.
Well, that is strange. Having talked to the Apple distribution rep, he referred to MacOS X as a “UNIX-like” operating system.
As for you comments regarding the internals of MacOS, if you have a problem with it, and you can provide a solution, scoot over to http://www.opendarwin.org and throw your 50cents worth into its development.
And how useful is:
…. not to mention baggage we never even think about that we inherited from history, things like having to manually save documents – why should a user be responsible for manually flushing a memory buffer? So instead of fixing the problem at the OS design level, by having a proper behind-the-scenes object persistance system combined with a more powerful FS, we just hack around it with “auto save” and other such things.
Its not useful in the slightest. Want to make something useful, how about an operating system that can repair itself based on any errors generated due to bugs. That would be a heck of alot more useful than hearing someone whinge like a sheila because he has to suffer under the strain of clicking on “save” when writting a document.
Goodness gracious me, cry me a river. There is nothing wrong with operating systems in their current form. What you’re essentially wanting is more automation. Sorry, I and many people don’t want that. People have bought microwaves, used the auto-reheat function and found that their meal is still cold or worse, they use the auto-tune function on their TV and find that 28 out of the 30 channels on their TV are poorly tuned in.
This is what automation does. It assumes that there is a generic solution for everyone for every occasion. What we need is LESS automation and more CUSTOMISATION to individuals needs. The idea of the one size fits all, everyone should be happy with GENERIC setup is rubbish.
Its like Windows XP, filled with Wizards that are unclear about their purpose. For example, setting up a new internet connection, when you select, there are three options. How many new users out there assumed that you select the top one? every person I have helped have assume that since they’ve signed up for a new account, that is what they should use. Compare that to Apple, they are able to provide EASE of use without intrusive wizards. Simplified layout, plain english descriptions and good help files. That is what SHOULD be invested in, not this crap you’re going on about.
Apple realized that even if they wanted to pay for the license to use the name, they are denied because their OS wouldn’t pass the tests.
As for those who say that the name is useless, think about how useful it is to be able to easily port and use software across unices. Without a standards body there would be chaos and people having to pay through their nose for software.
Who the heck calls tissues as Kleenex and photocopies as eroxes? its like katchup, its called “tomato Sauce”, and tissues are called just that, tissues, and photocopiers are called just that, photocopiers. As for the cloth-reusable, they’re called Hankichief. The only people who feel the need to relabel every logical thing to something different are the Americans. Everyone else in the world, namely 5.8billion are capable of using the correct names.
Mike,
EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT post on page one in response to someone asking you to “back it up”! What discussion groups are supposed to be. About time someone steps in and “backs it up” after someone dares them to. I love it.
And the fact that we both think alike.
There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think to myself “There has to be a better way”. while using a computer. And I have *seriously* dabbled in almost every major OS in the last 15 years. The closest attempt to my shear happiness was BeOS, but unfortuanately I am not a programmer (or adverse enough in the inner workings of OS’s) to know what flaws that had. I just know it had some great features, was apparently started with a ‘clean’ design slate, and didn’t ‘feel’ left behind by legacy.
Sometimes I just can’t help but wonder why this huge snowball started with Linux. To me it is just 20-year old technology with great networking stack that is FREE (key word) trying to evolve into something for the masses today. Instead of the tinkerers having to pay for a commercial Unix-type OS, today they have Free ones for their servers. And with all the tinkerers having that powerful, free OS and getting High level IT jobs, of COURSE corporations want to embrace it. It is FREE, which saves them alot of money, And quite powerfull.
But to try and make it into a Mass-Market Desktop OS just doesn’t click as being worth it. All the focus should be on making it the absolute best server OS (100%). A do-all OS built with concepts and design of 20 years ago FOR serving is retarded. And let something else come out for the destop. Something new and completely unlike anything today or what MS want’s us to think the desktop as. I once had a dream of BeOS on the desktop and Linux Servers. Now, I dream of nothing else but the computers in The Minority Report…
eE
The first post is the best I’ve read for a long time.
The same goes for sweden…
Can’t we just figure out some sort of new generic name for operating systems like OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, to classify them?
Man what a waste of court time, and cost. I seem to remember at one points companies used to produce things people could use, resulting in mutually beneficial, wealth-creating business transactions.
Isn’t there some other word other than “Unix” that could be put into use? Call it “Chicken Soup” for all it matters.
It almost seems like creating a new term which became accepted on a widespread basis would act in everyone’s favor, and hopefully it would replace “Unix” and no one would find any benefit in getting a stupid certification from the Open Group.
Which reminds me, I’m about to be layed off. I should get cracking in terms of looking for someone to sue to pay the bills in the interim. And be a real man of the times.
Sincerly i can’t understand where the problem is:
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
The whole issue is explained rather well at
http://www.netbsd.org/Misc/call-it-a-duck.html
MacOSX are really in no better position of calling their product UNIX. Or eve UNIX based, as it would imply it really is UNIX(tm)
If any OS is to be deemed UNIX, it has to conform to the Open Group’s Single Unix Specifications.
If it does, it’s UNIX. If not, then….it isn’t…
I found these instances of “UNIX” on apples website:
——————————————-
“… the rock-solid reliability of UNIX”
“UNIX BASED”
“UNIX-BASED”
“The power of UNIX.”
“the updated UNIX libraries”
——————————————-
I’m getting really tired of all this lawsuit nonsense these days. The legal culture in the United States has developed into a grotesque circus.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/otherunix.html
UNIX, as the following quote proves, is actually a trademark for a cereal fungacide, intended to maintain wheat-fields in relatively good shape.
Though, come to think of it, UNIX is actually a trademark for diapers/nappies.
No, it’s a trademark for a series of pens and other office equipment … atually it’s a bar in downtown Ashdod, Israel … UNIX is really a hair salon …
You see how you get it all confused imagining it has anything to do with computers?
Now I just can’t get my head around the use an orchard – Apple Inc., – might have for a Hair Salon … No, I just can’t …
Help me, somebody please
>I’m getting really tired of all this lawsuit nonsense >these days. The legal culture in the United States has >developed into a grotesque circus.
I couldn’t agree more. They have all gone bananas. Unfortunatly US-Americans have got nothing better to do then filing lawsuits.
Do you remember the story of an old lady who wanted to dry her pet in the microwave oven? BTW, she got paid out millions by the manufacturer, only because those poor souls forgot to mention in their manuals that you shouldn’t put living animals in a microwave oven….
They say “UNIX Based” and it is an accurate statement. They are not using it as a trademark. I don’t think they will lose this one.
Same here. How on earth are you going to refer to an OS with UNIX-like capabilities without saying UNIX? Apple will win this case, but then again, this lawsuit should _not_ have been filed in the first place. It’s just ludicrous.
mythought posted:
>Do you remember the story of an old lady who wanted to dry >her pet in the microwave oven?
Don’t get me started on that one!
Basically this is simple, UNIX is hot and making money. Anyone who has the smallest claim to unix will now sue to take a share of it. Its that simple.
To my warning to OBOS. Get rid of your name and don’t even mention Beos or you could be next in a couple of years. Also don’t mention compatibility with beos. Let the users figure that out. Work out your legal issues now or it will cost a lot more later. You could find yourself confronted with a successful movement that someone, perhaps palmsource or palmsources new owner, will try to sue to oblivion. this is america after all, the land where lawyers and idiots reign.