POSIX ( ) or "Portable Operating System Interface" is the collective name of a family of related standards specified by the IEEE to define the application programming interface (API) for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system, although the standard can apply to any operating system. Originally, the name stood for IEEE Std 1003.1-1988, which as the name suggests, was released in 1988. The family of POSIX standards is formally designated as IEEE 1003 and the international standard name is ISO/IEC 9945. The standards emerged from a project that began near 1985. Formerly known as IEEE-IX, the term POSIX was suggested by Richard Stallman in response to an IEEE request for a memorable name.