Is Linux Unix?
What's really needed to settle this is a definition of Unix. Unfortunately, there's no obvious definition against which we might compare Linux. The systems we all accept as unambiguously Unix -- that is, BSD, HP-UX, Solaris and Tru64 -- have more functional differences than, say, Linux and Unixware.
My Web logs show that somebody asked Google an interesting question sometime just before 08:03:41 Eastern on January 24th and then again sometime before 04:54:29 Eastern on January 26th. As entered the first time, the search was for "linux to unix relationship," although that became "relationship of linux to unix" a few minutes later and "what is the relation of Linux to Unix" two days after that.
Since my personal site isn't the first one that comes up when you do these searches, I decided the person must have been very interested in pursuing the question. So I set out to answer that question in this column. Aside from legal considerations associated with trademarks and copyrights, I know, of course, that the answer is obvious: Linux is Unix. Duh. Even Scott McNealy has said so.
