recent history of Unix evolution

[Kevin.N.Broekhoven at QueensU.CA]

Submitted-by: Kevin.N.Broekhoven at QueensU.CA

I am writing a small article which touches on recent evolution in Unix
standards, but can't seem to find some information that it would be nice to
include.  I would appreciate it if some kind soul who is up on all of this
could please shed a little light on this for me.

Questions:

1.AT&T, Sun and Microsoft banded together in the late 80's to create System V.4
    as the merge of the System V.3, SunOS, and Xenix strains of Unix.
    What was the duration of the software development phase, and what were the
    release dates of System V.4 on each significant platform?

2.Similarly, OSF/1 is "currently under development" but is having some problems
    getting off the ground.  I believe IBM has pulled out of the effort to
    develop the operating system, in favour of AIX which works.  What are the
    dates of:    1.the formation of OSF
                 2.the development phase of the OSF/1 operating system
                   (is it still under development, or  has it been abandoned
                     completely after the pull out by Big Blue?)
    What are the Unix roots of the OSF/1 operating system?  i.e. was it
    developed from System V.2, or Mach from Carnegie Mellon U?

3.What is the date of the formation of UI (Unix International)?

4.What are the Unix roots of AIX?  i.e. was it developed from System V.2 or
    Mach?  What are its advantages and disadvantages relative to other
    strains of Unix?

3.What are the Unix roots of Mach?  Why did Carnagie Melon develop it?  What
    are its advantages and disadvantages relative to other strains of Unix?
    (i.e. why did Next (and possibly IBM?) choose Mach over BSD or some
     other flavour of Unix?)

4.Is there a competition between System V.4 and OSF/1, in the sense that one
    will be chosen as the ANSI standard Unix, or are they both sufficiently
    conformant to current ANSI/POSIX standards, that this is not an issue:
    that the competition is strictly in the marketplace?

I realise this is a lot to ask, but I can't find this information in any of
our locally available references.  RTFM responses, or references to articles
in recent publications welcome.

with thanks in anticipation,

Kevin Broekhoven                     Computing Centre
applications programmer              Queens University K7L-3N6 (Canada)
Bitnet, NetNorth: BROEKHVN at QUCDN     IP: kevin at ccs.QueensU.CA (130.15.48.9)
X.400:  Kevin.Broekhoven at QueensU.CA  Bell: (613) 545-2235 fax: 545-6798

Volume-Number: Volume 22, Number 84