What's in a name? (was Re: wanted: UNIX or clone)

[Evan Leibovitch]

In article <1991Mar29.020148.24672 at pegasus.com> richard at pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes:

>A number of vendors
>use licensed AT&T code but are not allowed by AT&T to refer to their product
>in the marketplace as "Unix".

First off, nobody I know in this market uses the word "Unix". Everyone
selling the product uses the all-caps version, "UNIX". I had been, er,
"reprimanded" for my use of "Unix" in official capacities (hi, Peter :-).

As for use of the name: I believe licencees must pay extra to use "UNIX"
as their trade-name for the product. I believe that Interactive (386/ix)
and ESIX have chosen to invent their own names, even tho' their products
are both close to the current AT&T release. Both certainly use the term
UNIX liberally in their advertising (as well they should!).

I recall when Everex was struggling to make a unique name for its
UNIX product, before coming up with ESIX  (I still have a number of
floppies, manuals, and paraphenelia marked ENIX). Before the final
name was chosen in May 1989, a number of others (ENIX, EOS, OSIX) had
been considered, but all conflicted with something else.

Despite what seemed at the time to be an agonizing name search I remember
that the whole exercize was considered by Everex to be more worthwhile
(for a number of reasons) than merely calling their product UNIX.

Dell, UHC, and Microport have chosen to pay the money and use the name
UNIX, I believe. So has SCO, even though its UNIX is probably further
from the original AT&T code than any of the others. This will
certainly be the case when 486/ix and ESIX R4 start shipping.

By the way: Is Interactive still going to call its Release 4 product
"486/ix"? Is this not the stupidest, most confusing naming scheme in the
market right now?

-- 
 Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
       evan at telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504
 "Never will I succumb to the effects of bandwagonism" -- Dream Warriors