Meaning of UTS in UTS_RELEASE

Question

UTS_RELEASE defines the kernel version in Linux. It's defined in generated/utsrelease.h, which is created by the main Makefile like so:

# KERNELRELEASE can change from a few different places, meaning version.h
# needs to be updated, so this check is forced on all builds

uts_len := 64
define filechk_utsrelease.h
        if [ `echo -n "$(KERNELRELEASE)" | wc -c ` -gt $(uts_len) ]; then \
          echo '"$(KERNELRELEASE)" exceeds $(uts_len) characters' >&2;    \
          exit 1;                                                         \
        fi;                                                               \
        (echo \#define UTS_RELEASE \"$(KERNELRELEASE)\";)
endef

I was wondering what UTS stands for, here?

Answer 1

I will do a bet : it comes from unix history age. Unix Time Sharing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing

( with another link to give more weight to my guess : http://www.linuxmisc.com/9-unix-programmer/515225795f89ebf5.htm )

Additionally if you search for UTS on Wikipedia you'll find this as evidence too:

UTS is a three-letter abbreviation which may describe:

• Time-sharing, known as Unix Time-sharing System (UTS) when abbreviated in the source code of many Unix-like operating systems

Answer 2

Maybe https://lwn.net/Articles/531114/ and https://lwn.net/Articles/179345/ are the right(tm) answer :-)