My favorite excerpt from APUE

In older versions of Linux (those before version 2.1.81), chown didn't follow symbolic links. From version 2.1.81 onward, chown follows symbolic links. With FreeBSD 5.2.1 and Mac OS X 10.3, chown follows symbolic links. (Prior to 4.4BSD, chown didn't follow symbolic links, but this was changed in 4.4BSD.) In Solaris 9, chown also follows symbolic links.

[I am not sure I follow, Sir :-]