Last Updated : May 8 2007: freq.ques,v 1.18
This is the Frequently Asked Questions file for the Austin Common Standards Revision Group. Its maintainer is Andrew Josey (ajosey at The Open Group ). Suggestions and contributions are always welcome.
This document can be found on the world wide web at http://www.opengroup.org/austin/faq.html.
This article includes answers to the following.
Q0. What is the Austin Group?
Q1. Is there a description of the project describing the scope?
Q2. Where can I download the specifications from?
Q3. What are the restrictions on the draft?
Q4. Why should I get involved and how do I become a participant in the Austin Group?
Q5. Who else is participating in the Austin Group?
Q6. Are there minutes available from meetings of the group?
Q7. Are there procedures for the operation of the group?
Q8. Where is the schedule for draft development?
Q9. Are there meetings? Can any one attend?
Q10. How can I find out where the next meeting is ?
Q11. What is aardvark?
Q12. How can I submit a comment against the specifications?
Q13. I filed an aardvark but did not see a copy on the mailing list. Problem?
Q14. Does this project have an IEEE Project number ?
Q15. What happened to the existing POSIX 1003.1-1990 and POSIX 1003.2-1992 standards when the 2001 standard completed?
Q16. I can not attend meetings , how do I get my point of view listened to?
Q17. What are the JDOCS procedures?
Q18. How do I join the mailing list?
Q19. How does this effort compare to the Linux Standard Base?
Q20. Does the unification with the Single UNIX Specification mean the
Austin Group specifications are now only relevant to the UNIX community?
Q21. What are the core technical changes in the 2001 Austin Group specifications
over the 1990/1992 documents?
Q22. Were there many interfaces removed in the 2001 standard?
Q23. What changed in the handling of options for the 2001 standard?
Q24. What are the new functions added in the 2008 revision?
Q25. How do I submit a suggestion for inclusion in a future
revision of the specification?
Q26. How do I get permission to excerpt materials from the
standard for reuse in my product
Q27. What is the policy on obtaining permission to excerpt materials from the
standard for reuse in my product
Q28. Who has been granted permission to excerpt materials from the standard
Q29. Are there any other related FAQs?
Q30. What products implement the standard?
Q31. How can I obtain old copies of the standard?
Q32. How do I add a question to this FAQ?
The Austin Common Standards Revision Group (CSRG) is an open technical working group established to develop and maintain develop and maintain the core open systems interfaces that are the POSIX® 1003.1 (and former 1003.2) standards, ISO/IEC 9945 parts 1 to 4, and the core of the Single UNIX Specification, Version 3.
The approach to specification development is "write once, adopt everywhere", with the deliverables being a set of specifications that carry simultaneously the IEEE POSIX designation, The Open Group's Technical Standard designation, and the ISO/IEC designation.
The current set of specifications is simultaneously ISO/IEC 9945, IEEE Std 1003.1 and forms the core of the Single UNIX Specification Version 3 . This unique development combines both the industry led efforts and the formal standardization activities into a single initiative, and includes a wide spectrum of participants.
The specification was approved by The Open Group on September 12 2001, as the Base Specifications, Issue 6, by the IEEE on December 6th 2001 as IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, and by ISO/IEC as ISO/IEC 9945:2002 in November 2002. The specification was published during early 2002, and is available in hardcopy, electronically (including on the web in html, see later) and on CDROM. The document has been updated regularly to incorporate technical corrections; the most recent version is now the 2004 edition of the standard which incorporates the first two sets of technical corrections, Technical Corrigendum 1 and Technical Corrigendum 2 , known in short as "TC1 and TC2".
The IEEE and The Open Group 2004 edition of the standard was published on April 30th 2004, and updates the standard to include Technical Corrigendum 1 and 2 (TC1 / TC2). TC2 has been approved at ISO as TC1 to the ISO/IEC 9945:2003 (we do not expect ISO to publish a new edition incorporating TC2).
Its worth noting that within the text the standard is still referred to as IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (since the TC's are just sets of corrections).
Work commenced in 2006 to revise the standard, and is now ongoing with regular drafts being produced. The expected new standard is targeted to be available in late 2008.
Q1. Is there a description of the project describing the scope?
The scope for the next revision, targeted for 2008 is available as a draft:
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_285r2.txt.
The original scope and scopes of the technical corrigenda are also available. See Austin/9 in the document register for the original scope
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_9r6.txt.
A scope for Technical Corrigendum Number 1 (TC1), which addresses bugs in the final standard is available
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_113r1.txt.
The scope for TC2 is technically identical to TC1.
Development of the standard occurs by consensus, often with long discussions on the reflector before that is achieved. Should issue resolution require a vote then the group is structured so that the three organizations that have adopted the specifications have an Organization Representative (OR) that can cast a vote. The three organizations are the IEEE's Portable Application Software Committee (PASC), the ISO POSIX workgroup group which is known as SC22 POSIX Advisory Group, and The Open Group's Base Working group.
Q2. Where can I download the specifications from?
Ongoing draft specifications for the technical corrigenda are available online from the Austin Group web site at http://www.opengroup.org/austin/ . You need to be a member of the Austin Group. Information on how to join the group is on the web site.
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/. (Austin Group Home Page)
Copies of the final standard can also be obtained either from The IEEE (search on 1003.1-2001) , The Open Group (Look for documents T041,C046,C047,C048,C049) or ISO (look for ISO/IEC 9945 parts 1 thru 4). It is freely available in pdf format to members of the Open Group from the Open Group publications catalog. If you wish to signup up your organization to become a member of The Open Group and are an active participant you can sign up for no fee at http://www.opengroup.org/austin/ogmembers/ (note this is for companies and organizations only). If you want to join as an individual please contact Andrew Josey directly, he can then add you as an individual affiliate member.
The html version of the standard is freely available, we request you to register at URL:http://www.unix-systems.org/version3/
Q3. What are the restrictions on the draft?
See the copyright notice on the documents and the notice at http://www.opengroup.org/austin/login.html . Downloading the draft is taken as agreement to abide by the stated terms and conditions. In brief you need to be a participant in the Austin Group in order to download the drafts.
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/login.html (Copyright Notice)
All queries regarding permission to reproduce sections of the standard should be sent to austin-group-permissions at Open Group . Permission needs to be granted by both copyright holders, The IEEE and The Open Group.
The IEEE and The Open Group position on implementations of the standard is as follows: "it is fair use of the standard for implementors to use the names, labels etc contained within the specification. The intent of publication of the standard is to encourage implementations of the standard. Your attention is drawn to the disclaimer regarding verification of patents when implementing the standard."
Q4. Why should I get involved and how do I become a participant in the Austin Group?
Why should you get involved? By feeding back issues with the standard based on implementation experience the standard can be improved and extended with new functionality, which in turn can "raise the bar of commonality" among systems. There is often much more to be gained by having key functionality share a common interface and/or behave in exactly the same way, than for it to be different.
For further thoughts on this topic see: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/papers/posix-paper1.txt
To participate you need to join the Austin Group. See http://www.opengroup.org/austin/lists.html for more information.
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/lists.html. (How to Join the Austin Group)
Q5. Who else is participating in the Austin Group?
A list of participants can be queried from the mailing list information page at http://www.opengroup.org/austin/lists.html As of May 2007, there are approximately 520 participants from over 100 organizations.
Q6. Are there minutes and documents available from meetings of the group?
Yes the group makes all its documentation publically available in the document register.
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docreg.html. (the Document Register)
Q7. Are there procedures for the operation of the group?
Yes, there are two sets of procedures.
This second document is also known as the JDOCS procedures.
The procedures for maintenance of the approved standard
and future revision are in Austin/112r1
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_112r1.txt
Q8. Where is the schedule for draft development?
The schedule for the 2008 revision is available at
Austin 319.
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_319.html
Q9. Are there meetings? Can any one attend?
Yes there are meetings or teleconferences after each draft review period. The purpose of these meetings is comment resolution and project planning. These are open meetings and anyone can attend. For face to face meetings, an agenda is circulated at least thirty days in advance of the meeting and minutes are kept for each meeting. For face to face meetings there is always a teleconference bridge for those unable to attend to participate. We also are on IRC at irc://irc.freestandards.org #austin
Q10. How can I find out where the next meeting is ?
Check the Austin Group web site (http://www.opengroup.org/austin), face to face meetings are announced at least 30 days in advance on the main page. There are also periodic teleconferences to review defect reports.
Q11. What is aardvark?
Aardvark is the commenting format used to review the drafts. It is also being used for the defect reporting mechanism on the final standard. The use of a standard format facilitates automated collation of multiple comments from multiple parties against a large volume of materials (the standard is 3600 pages+), into a sorted change request report. Specific information on the format can be found at the aardvark web page.
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/aardvark/aardvark.html (Aardvark information)
Q12. How can I submit a comment against the specifications?
For defects in the final text of the specification, please use the defect reporting form. Go to http://www.opengroup.org/austin/defectform.html . This page also gives alternate instructions for defect report submission using email rather than the web.
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/defectform.html (How to report a defect)
For bugs in the Technical Corrigenda, use the bug reporting form which is separate from the defect reporting form. A URL is located with each draft corrigenda stating its location.
Q13. I filed an aardvark but did not see a copy on the mailing list. Problem?
No problem. There is a different list. The incoming aardvark are sent to the Austin-Review mailing list. The purpose of this list is only for circulation of aardvark comments, and of aardvark change request reports (generated by the editorial team).
Q14. Does this project have an IEEE Project number ?
Yes, on 26th June 1999 the IEEE Standards Board approved the project authorization request and designated the number P1003.1.
On August 15th 2002, the IEEE Standards Board approved the technical corrigendum 1 project authorization request with the designation:
P1003.1-2001/Cor 1-200x Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) -- Technical Corrigendum Number 1
On August 15th 2003, the IEEE Standards Board approved the technical corrigendum 2 project authorization request with the designation:
P1003.1-2001/Cor 2-200x Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) -- Technical Corrigendum Number 2
On 15 September 2006 the IEEE-SA Standards Board approved the revision project authorization request.
Q15. What happened to the existing POSIX 1003.1-1990 and POSIX 1003.2-1992 standards when the 2001 standard was completed?
Since the material contained in the existing POSIX 1003.1 and POSIX 1003.2 standards is merged into the revision, POSIX 1003.1-1990 and its amendments, and POSIX 1003.2-1992 and its amendments were administratively withdrawn by the IEEE.
Q16. I can not attend meetings , how do I get my point of view listened to?
Firstly, if the point can be described concisely with specific actions to remedy, then the recommended solution is to file an aardvark that will then be considered at the review meeting.
Secondly, if you are not sure about a problem and how to solve it, the first course of action is to start a discussion on the austin-group mailing list, and then if necessary to approach your designated Organizational Representative as per the JDOCS procedures to raise the matter on your behalf at a review meeting.
It is also possible to contact the chair to arrange an agenda slot for the review meeting where you can teleconference in with the review group.
Q17. What are the JDOCS procedures?
This is a tri-party set of procedures for operation of the joint group. The three organizations are IEEE PASC, The Open Group and ISO/IEC. In brief, these procedures layout the basic principles and high level operating rules for the group, and issue resolution procedures .
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_14.pdf
Q18. How do I join the mailing list?
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/lists.html. (How to Join the Austin Group)
Q19. How does this effort compare to the Linux Standard Base?
The Austin Group documents specify application programming interfaces (APIs) at the source level, and thus are about source code portability. They are neither a code implementation nor an operating system, but a stable definition of a programming interface that those systems supporting the specification guarantee to provide to the application programmer. Efforts such as the Linux Standard Base are about binary portability and define a specific binary implementation of an interface to operating system services. So they are standardization efforts with similar goals, to raise the bar of common functionality in their areas, with the Austin Group documents being a source level cross platform API, and the LSB aiming to be a volume binary ABI for the Linux platform. Put another way, the POSIX APIs are targeted for vendor neutrality across many platforms whereas the LSB binary API is a single platform.
Q20. Does the unification with the Single UNIX Specification mean the Austin Group specifications are now only relevant to the UNIX community?
No, the additional features to support version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification have been added as an option (the XSI option). The core POSIX interfaces still comprise a series of options allowing a minimal implementation, and with the subprofiling standards such as POSIX 1003.13 and its revision (currently in progress), the Austin Group specifications are relevant as the open industry standard source API for embedded real-time devices and controllers.
For a good description of the modular options in the Austin Group specification see URL: http://people.redhat.com/~drepper/posix-option-groups.html
Q21. What are the core technical changes in the 2001 Austin Group specifications over the 1990/1992 documents?
The main changes are as follows: alignment with ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (ISO C), support for IPv6, integration of recent POSIX realtime amendments ( 1003.1d, 1003.1j, 1003.1q), amendments to the core POSIX functionality from the 1003.2b and 1003.1a amendments, application of technical corrigendum from The Open Group and IEEE interpretations, revision of options , removal of obsolescent and legacy interfaces.
Q22. Were there many interfaces removed in the 2001 edition?
Interfaces that were previously marked as obsolescent or Legacy (with The Open Group Base documents), and thus where due warning has been given to application programmers have been removed in this revision. The long scope document gives a list of the affected interfaces. The biggest single affected technical area was the removal of the XTI interfaces which were not merged from the original Networking base documents (these interfaces had been marked as deprecated in XNS5.2). The only exception to this has been the c89 utility that has been removed and superseded by c99. In a small number of cases some interfaces have been marked Legacy or obsolescent in this revision to warn the application programmer that alternate interfaces should be used when writing new applications and that these interfaces may be removed in a future revision.
Q23. What changed in the handling of options for 2001?
The FIPS 151-2 options were made mandatory in the revision, for example mandating support for job control and supplementary groups. New options were introduced for support of the recent POSIX amendments 1003.1d, 1003.1j and 1003.1q, support for IPv6, support for raw sockets and support for the X/Open System Interface extension (for support of version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification). The Reader/Writer locks option has been merged into the Threads option, and a new XSI STREAMS option was broken out from the X/Open System Interface
Q24. What are the new functions added in the 2008 revision?
The following new functions from The Open Group Extended API Sets Part 1 to 4 are introduced:
alphasort(), dirfd(), dprintf(), duplocale(), faccessat(), fchmodat(), fchownat(), fdopendir(), fexecve(), fmemopen(), freelocale(), fstatat(), futimesat(), getdelim(), getline (), isalnum_l(), isalpha_l(), isblank_l(), iscntrl_l(), isdigit_l(), isgraph_l(), islower_l(), isprint_l(), ispunct_l(), isspace_l(), isupper_l(), iswalnum_l(), iswalpha_l(), iswblank_l(), iswcntrl_l(), iswctype_l(), iswdigit_l(), iswgraph_l(), iswlower_l(), iswprint_l(), iswpunct_l(), iswspace_l(), iswupper_l(), iswxdigit_l(), isxdigit_l(), linkat(), mbsnrtowcs(), mkdirat(), mkdtemp(), mkfifoat(), mknodat(), newlocale(), openat(), open_memstream(), psiginfo(), psignal(), pthread_mutexattr_getrobust(), pthread_mutexattr_setrobust(), pthread_mutex_consistent(), readlinkat(), renameat(), scandir(), stpcpy(), stpncpy(), strcasecmp_l(), strcoll_l(), strfmon_l(), strncasecmp_l(), strndup(), strnlen(), strsignal(), strxfrm_l(), symlinkat(), tolower_l(), toupper_l(), towctrans_l(), towlower(), towupper(), unlinkat(), uselocale(), wcpcpy(), wcpncpy(), wcscasecmp(), wcscasecmp_l(), wcscoll_l(), wcsdup(), wcsncasecmp(), wcsncasecmp_l(), wcsnlen(), wcsnrtombs(), wcsxfrm_l(), wctrans_l(), wctype_l(),
Q25. How do I submit a suggestion for inclusion in a future revision of the specification?
The procedures for inclusion of new features in
a future revision are in Austin/112r1. You can also email
suggestions to austin-group-futures-l at The Open Group.
URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_112r1.txt
The simplest way to start a formal discussion is to fill in a defect report
form explaining what problem occurs through the feature not being
in the standard and how this can be remedied by its inclusion:
URL:
http://www.opengroup.org/austin/defectform.html (How to report a defect)
Q26. How do I get permission to excerpt materials from the standard for reuse in my product?
All queries regarding permission to reproduce sections of the standard should be sent to austin-group-permissions at Open Group . Permission needs to be granted by both copyright holders, The IEEE and The Open Group.
Q27. What is the policy on obtaining permission to excerpt materials from the standard for reuse in my product?
The copyright holders have a form that needs completion in order to assess a request for permission. This form is available on request from the address noted in Q26, and is used to determine the scope of the materials requested (list of manual pages) and what use is to be made of them. The general policy is to grant reasonable requests, with the requirement that due acknowledgement be made in the resulting material together with a disclaimer block that makes it clear where the definitive standard can be obtained from.
Q28. Who has been granted permission to excerpt materials from the standard?
The copyright holders have granted permission to a number of well known commercial organizations, as well as to several open source projects. Some of these are listed below:
The IEEE and The Open Group grant Permissions to Linux Man Pages project to incorporate material.
The IEEE and The Open Group grant Permissions to the FreeBSD project to incorporate material.
NetBSD OPERATING SYSTEM TO ADD ELEMENTS OF THE POSIX® STANDARD
Other projects that have received permission grants related to use of documentation include Gunnar Ritter's Heirloom Toolkit and other tools, Joerg Schilling's pax and find, Jens Schweikardt book, and the ISPRAS Linux testing project.
Q29. Are there any other related FAQs?
The POSIX 1003.1 Frequently Asked Questions file is available at http://www.opengroup.org/austin/papers/posix_faq.html
The Single UNIX Specification Frequently Asked Questions file is available at http://www.opengroup.org/austin/papers/single_unix_faq.html
Q30. What products implement the standard?
The standard is widely adopted, sometimes in whole and sometimes in part. The Open Group and the IEEE have a number of certification programs for products who want to show they implement the standard.
See the Open Group's UNIX 03 certified products list.
See the POSIX®: Certified by IEEE and The Open Group certified products list.
Q31. How can I obtain old copies of the standard?
For copies of IEEE standards you need to contact IEEE or visit http://standards.ieee.org.
The Open Group allows you to download previous versions of the Single UNIX Specification, either as the constituent parts (see http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/catalog/un.htm) or as sets (see https://store.opengroup.org.
Q32. How do I add a question to this FAQ?Send the question (preferably with a proposed answer) to Andrew Josey.