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LSB to Provide Standards as Optional Modules

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the step-in-line dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The LSB will begin providing certain standards as optional modules to the core LSB standard that will enable standards flexibility and allow for a wider variety of standards, eWeek is reporing Free Standards Group officials said at the OSDL Enterprise Linux Summit today. The article goes on to say that the FSG is also looking at possibly franchising out the application certification component of the LSB to the distribution providers themselves."

17 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Wait just a second... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful


    'Optional' standards?


    Explain to me why this makes any sense.

    1. Re:Wait just a second... by aeakett · · Score: 5, Funny

      My favorite part was "wider variety of standards". You know what they say... "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."

  2. Want More Standards? We've got'em by Colonel+Panic · · Score: 2, Funny

    will enable standards flexibility and allow for a wider variety of standards

    Bummed that there is only one LSB standard?
    Wish you could make your own standard?

    Don't worry, more LSB standards are on the way!

    Don't like the LSB?
    You can choose from:
    * The Mandrake LSB standard
    * The RedHat LSB standard
    * The Gentoo LSB standard
    * The Debian LSB standard ...and the list goes on...

  3. Because evolution works. by copponex · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, yeah. I wish I could force a packaging system on all the distros at one time. On the other hand, whatever packaging system does become the "optional standard" will be the best one out there, or at least the best combination of security/stability and ease of use.

    Do you know how many mail handling programs there are? Do you know how many are actually popular? Sendmail used to be the only choice, but now a lot of people use qmail.

    Give this GUI Linux desktop stuff some time to mature. In five years, nothing else will compare, no matter what the price.

    1. Re:Because evolution works. by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Think about it. Darwin/Aqua is a totally new thing that took them about five years, drawing from the same kind of open resources available to Linux at the time.

      I must have missed the point at which desktop Linux had 1000+ developers working on it and a billion dollars to play with.

      In five years, they had a completely new OS shipped and ready.

      No, they did massive imports from code bases they either bought or were BSD licensed. It's certainly not "completely new".

      On the other hand, Linux has been around for an entire decade now, and the desktops still look like they're competing with Windows 98 in a non-accelerated, 2D world of "Start" menus and taskbars.

      Linux has had hardware accelerated graphics for a very long time now. You must mean hardware window compositing, but ... wait. It has that too, albiet still an immature implementation you need a good box to run. But that's true of MacOS and Longhorn as well.

      I won't bother replying to the rest as it's simply provocative opinion (there's a shorter word for that).

  4. Bad idea.... by Kjella · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...let's see now. You have a fringe OS (at least in the desktop space), with a bunch of incompatible standards (deb, non-lsb rpm, ebuild etc.) and instead of actually getting one standard used (how many USE lsb packages?) they're going to make more?

    At most, they should have TWO - LSB-server and LSB-desktop. Not a "LSB-foo-bar packet" which doesn't run on a "LSB-foo" machine. The rest? Forget it.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    1. Re:Bad idea.... by drew · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think you miss the point of the LSB. LSB is not a package format- there is not such thing as an "LSB package", and deb, ebuild, rpm, etc. have nothing to do with the LSB.

      LSB defines a set of libraries and applications that will be present on all LSB compatible distributions/installations. It specifies things like kernel version, libc version, etc. so that a commercial application provider can say that "This application is certified to work with LSB 1.x" instead of "This application is certified to work on redhat 7.2, and may work on debian 2.2, suse 8.0 and possibly other installiations that have kernel 2.4.x, glibc 2.y, and foobar 3.0"

      What they are talking about doing now is adding optional components to the LSB. That way an application provider can say for example "This product is certified with LSB2.x + LSB Webserver 1.y" without having to add a web server as part of the LSB and thus requiring it to be installed on non-server computers. Likewise the current LSB defines few (if any) X toolkits, libraries, applications, etc. so in order to say that a commercial desktop application will run on any LSB certified platform, providers would have to statically link a lot of libraries that are already present on most desktop linux machines because the LSB doesn't include them. Also, as the article points out, there is a lot of interest in having Java be part of the standard, but so far they have not made it required because of the licensing issues. This way, Java installations could be standardized but made part of a separate module so that they would not be required for all LSB compliant installations.

      However, while having optional modules for the standard doesn't seem like a bad thing to me, the idea of having the distibution providers doing the certification seems like a mistake.

      --
      If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
    2. Re:Bad idea.... by kaisyain · · Score: 2, Informative


      LSB is not a package format- there is not such thing as an "LSB package", and deb, ebuild, rpm, etc. have nothing to do with the LSB.

      You might have to have a re-read of the Linux Packaging Specification section of the LSB. The LSB does not currently require that packages be in RPM (although it is "encouraged" and in the future may be required) but there definitely is an LSB package format and it is RPM.

  5. whoops... by grub · · Score: 3, Funny


    when I read "Standards as Optional" I thought this was a story about Microsoft.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  6. Please explain this to me by goldspider · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What is the point of having so many standards? Why have all these "standards" if everyone is using a different one?

    I always regarded standards as some level of uniformity and consistency. And yes, I know that standards restrictions can impede innovation, but I think there's a time when one "best" method of doing something should be chosen as THE standard.

    --
    "Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
  7. Congratulations by iwrigley · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's not often you see the word 'standards' five times in one sentence. Now if only that sentence had actually made sense...

  8. For crying out loud, Read The Fine Article by sczimme · · Score: 2, Informative


    Why do we need more standards defining the Least Significant Bit?
    ...
    Seriously, why can't articles explain what all of the acronyms mean?

    Here is your big pointy hat - go sit in the corner.

    From the FIRST PARAGRAPH of the article:

    The Free Standards Group has decided to move away from a single, core LSB (Linux Standards Base) specification, and is instead going to break this down into different modules that can be combined to give a server or desktop LSB standard.(emphasis mine)

    --
    I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
  9. Closed standards for Open Source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is it me, or does anyone else find it ironic that the main standards effort for Linux distros (LSB) has been closed to Debian and other community efforts? While instead catering to the big, commercial interests.

    We don't need closed standards for Open Source.

  10. Re:What does LSB stand for? by Linker3000 · · Score: 2, Funny

    According to the article:

    "To make for easier processing and power saving, the LSB can now be fixed as a one OR a zero (according to which standard you use) for ALL operations.

    1) Fixing this bit means one less digit to process (or shift) because its state is now globally known - for 16-bit computations, this will save a nominal 1/16th of the effective processing time, thus speeding up programs with only a marginal loss of numerical accuracy.

    2) Because the bit no longer needs to be toggled between logic states, that saves the energy wastage of 4-6 transistors per flip-flop or gate per processor cycle (or 1 FET/CMOS gate for DRAM-type memory) - considering that modern CPUs operate at millions of cycles per second, the energy saving, although fundamentally measured in picowatts, soon adds up to a siginficant amount. Future developments on this power saving feature may see the 'recovered' energy recycled onto the national grid as a chargeback to the consumer or used to charge domestic appliances, portable devices such as cell phones and MP3 players etc."

    --
    AT&ROFLMAO
  11. Sounds funny but makes sense... by crazy+blade · · Score: 5, Informative
    The LSB will begin providing certain standards as optional modules to the core LSB standard that will enable standards flexibility and allow for a wider variety of standards...

    Upon first reading the above I almost laughed. What good are standards if they are flexible and come in great variety? Then I did what no other self-respecting slashdotter would dare to do: I started RTFAing...

    What these guys are saying is we should have different standards for different types of machines (e.g. Servers vs Desktops) which are based on a common denominator. Therefore the addons to the standard may go into greater detail for that type of usage.

    I guess they want to make the standard stronger in some directions, while at the same time not encumbering types of distros which need not concern themselves with the gory details of something they don't include. I guess that sounds reasonable...

    --
    To err is human, but to forgive is beyond the scope of the Operating System...
  12. posix by bile · · Score: 2, Informative

    Posix has optional sections of it's standards. Like multiprocess locking. Which isnt implimented in Linux before 2.5 because of the clone threading model.

  13. You've hit the core problem. by khasim · · Score: 2, Interesting
    However, while having optional modules for the standard doesn't seem like a bad thing to me, the idea of having the distibution providers doing the certification seems like a mistake.
    Bingo. What incentive does Red Hat have to ensure LSB compliance in addition to (or instead of) Red Hat compliance?

    The original stated purpose of the LSB was to guarantee that an app you got from an ISV who had certified that app against the LSB would run on any LSB compliant system.

    If Red Hat certifies an ISV's app against the LSB implementation that Red Hat has, where is the guarantee that the app will run on a Debian LSB system? Or even a SuSE LSB system?

    In which case, you're back at the beginning with the "problem" that a package built for Red Hat will not be guaranteed to run on a SuSE box.