Tuesday, 20 September 2005 The Free Standards Group, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing and promoting open source software standards, and the LSB workgroup today announced the availability of the Linux Standard Base (LSB) 3.0, an essential component for the long-term market success of Linux. The Free Standards Group also announced today that Red Hat, Novell, the Debian Common Core Alliance and Asianux are all certifying to the latest versions of their operating systems to the LSB, marking the successful deployment of a true global standard for Linux.

A well supported standard for Linux is the necessary component to Linux's continued success. Without a commonly adopted standard, Linux will fragment, thus proving costly for ISVs to port their applications to the operating system and making it difficult for end users and Linux vendors alike. With the LSB, all parties -- distribution vendors, ISVs and end users -- benefit as it becomes easier and less costly for software vendors to target Linux, resulting in more applications available for the Linux platform. The vision of a standard Linux balances the needs of the competitive distribution ecosystem with the requirements of end users and independent software vendors for interoperability.

ISV Support and Benefits

The Free Standards Group also announced today that Computer Associates (CA), one of the largest independent software vendors for Linux, has joined the organization and is pledging resources to the FSG's new manageability project. This brings ISV representation in the FSG to a new height and adds to the other notable ISV members announced this year (BakBone, Covalent Technologies, Fortify, Hyperic, Levanta, Lymeware, Open Country, UGS, Veritas and others).

"The effective standardization of Linux implementations is essential for the growth of the market and for organizations to obtain maximum value from their technology investments," said Sam Greenblatt, senior vice president and senior technical advisor at CA. "Our participation in the Free Standards Group will enable CA to play a leading role is maintaining the quality and integrity of the Linux Standard Base, thereby strengthening the Linux community and ensuring the universal applicability of commercial Linux management solutions."

For ISVs, the LSB:

-- Lowers cost of software development/deployment
-- Lowers cost of supporting end users
-- Expands market opportunity for software from local to global


"The DCC Alliance was formed because enterprise clients were demanding a single Debian Linux standard, and the LSB is crucial to our success," said Ian Murdock, Debian founder and leader of the DCC Alliance. "Next month's release of the common core for Debian-based distributions will be certified to the LSB, meaning future versions of major Debian-based commercial distributions will be LSB-certified. The LSB with the full support of all major distributions makes Linux the overwhelming operating system choice for ISVs and end users."

"Novell is pleased to certify SUSE Linux from Novell to the LSB 3.0," said Marcus Rex, Chief Technology Officer, Open Source and Platforms of Novell. "The LSB is one of the most important elements of Linux. It delivers choice to end users and allows ISVs to more effectively target the Linux platform. Our LSB certification is an important milestone for our customers."

"Red Hat enjoys a close working relationship with the LSB to ensure a standard compliant offering that reduces costs for our ISV partners," said Deb Woods, vice president of Product Management at Red Hat. "Strong standards ultimately benefit our customers as we continue to grow a strong application and tools ecosystem for Red Hat Enterprise Linux."

These certifications deliver true global adoption of the standard and with it the critical mass necessary for truly enhanced benefits for ISVs and end users. With these certifications the overwhelming majority of the Linux market is now LSB certified. Other distributions are currently certifying their versions to the LSB according to their product release schedules.

"We've reached the tipping point with the LSB," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group. "Not only has the standard been enhanced to provide more functionality for ISVs, but now all major distributions are certifying to the standard. If you're an application developer targeting the Linux opportunity, your job just got a lot easier. If you're an operating system competing with Linux, your job just got more challenging."

LSB 3.0 Details

The Linux Standard Base is developed and maintained by the Linux Standard Base workgroup, a workgroup of the Free Standards Group. The LSB -- and most importantly its acceptance by all major distributions -- simplifies the development and porting of applications by ISVs. Application vendors will save millions of dollars by basing their applications on a clear set of standards.

The Linux Standard Base specification contains a base set of APIs, libraries and interoperability standards. It also includes test suites, development environments, sample implementations and developer documentation.

The new version contains an updated application binary interface (ABI) for C++ which, for the first time, is supported by all major distributions. This gives thousands of software vendors the ability to port their applications to Linux in a cost-effective manner and thus will result in an increase in application choice for end users.

The latest version of the LSB also includes additional alignment with POSIX which enhances the ability to code to industry-standard portability guidelines. Furthermore, a Realtime library (librt) has been added to the LSB, allowing applications to use POSIX clocks and timers and POSIX shared memory.

The LSB supports seven architectures: IA32, IA64, PPC32, PPC64, S390, S390X, X86_64. The standard is available today from the Free Standards Group Web site (www.freestandards.org).

About the Free Standards Group

The Free Standards Group is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the use and acceptance of free and open source software by developing and promoting standards. Key Free Standards Group projects include the Linux Standard Base (LSB), OpenI18N, OpenPrinting and the Accessibility Workgroup. Supported by leaders in the IT industry as well as the open source development community, the Free Standards Group fulfills a critical need to have common behavioral specifications, tools and ABIs across Linux platforms. More information on the Free Standards Group is available at www.freestandards.org.


Press Contact:
Amanda McPherson
415-531-0483


SOURCE: Free Standards Group




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