Report says macOS no longer appears on The Open Group's UNIX certified products register

Apple's macOS has been quietly removed from the official register of UNIX Certified Products, run by The Open Group.

The Open Group is the body that certifies systems under the Single UNIX Specification. Only systems that are fully compliant and certified under that specification can use the UNIX trademark. The register is the public list of products that have passed.

The Open Group says certification gives buyers and developers a common benchmark. It describes UNIX certification as a vendor-neutral, global standard for identifying open operating systems. It also says buyers can write UNIX conformance into their purchasing requirements.

For developers, the group lists several benefits: consistent behavior across UNIX implementations, better portability, backward compatibility, and more standard interfaces. It says this means less time spent porting applications. For users, it points to protection of existing systems, data and applications, and the freedom to buy from more than one supplier instead of being locked in to one.

The text we could extract from the register page lists these certified products. From IBM: z/OS 3.1 or later, with its Security Server and C/C++ Compiler, on IBM processors that support that version. Also from IBM: AIX 7 on POWER processors (at 7.2 TL5 or later, and at 7.1 TL5 or later or 7.2 TL2 or later), AIX 6 (6.1.2 with SP1 or later), AIX 5L for POWER (5.3, dated 7-2006 or later), and z/OS V2R1 or later.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's HP-UX 11i V3 Release B.11.31 or later on HP Integrity Servers is listed. So are two products from The SCO Group: UnixWare 7.1.3 and later, and SCO OpenServer Release 5 and Release 6.

The extracted text does not include any entry for Apple or macOS. But the page supplied only limited text, so that absence alone does not prove a removal. It also gives no date for any change and no statement from Apple or The Open Group.