From:	jim_howard AT mentorg DOT com ("James D. Howard")
Subject:	POSIX subsystem on NT
1 Nov 1996 22:05:49 -0800 :
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Yes, the initial delivery of POSIX on NT was there largely to enable
passing
the government lock-out specification about POSIX compatibility.  However,
MSFT has been getting lots of grief about its being inadequate.  As a
consequence, they have entered into an agreement with a company to provide
a MSFT-authorized replacement for the POSIX subsystem, with a clearly
defined timeline to migrate toward the Spec1170 / XPG4 Extended / UNIX 95
standard.

The company doing this is Softway Systems, Inc. in San Francisco.  They
have
their first rev. replacement available now.  From their Korn shell, you can
run either POSIX or Win32 programs.  Most GNU and/or net-obtained software
can be built and run with its accompanying SDK.  At the moment, the
commands
that come with it are the POSIX-specified ones, but their next release is
planned to have POSIX.2 "User Portability Extensions", full sockets.

The subsequent release will have X/Open / UNIX 95 commands and APIs.

It works well, and is a lot cheaper than MKS or other UNIX toolkits - er,
except for the Cygnus Win32/GNU stuff which is targeting to be "free".

Go take a look at:
   http://www.softway.com/OpenNT   - info on the replacement POSIX itself
and
   http://www.softway.com/tw       - tools already ported

---
Jim Howard
Mentor Graphics Corp.
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