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Squaring the Open Source/Open Standards Circle

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the learning-from-history dept.

Andy Updegrove writes "Before there was Linux, before there was open source, there was of course (and still is) an operating system called Unix that was robust, stable and widely admired. It was also available under license to anyone that wanted to use it, and partly for that reason many variants grew up and lost interoperability - and the Unix wars began. Those wars helped Microsoft displace Unix with Windows NT, which steadily gained market share until Linux, a Unix clone, in turn began to supplant NT. Unfortunately, one of the very things that makes Linux powerful also makes it vulnerable to the same type of fragmentation that helped to doom Unix - the open source licenses under which Linux distributions are created and made available. Happily, there is a remedy to avoid the end that befell Unix, and that remedy is open standards - specifically, the Linux Standards Base (LSB). The LSB is now an ISO/IEC standard, and was created by the Free Standards Group. In a recent interview, the FSG's Executive Director, Jim Zemlin, and CTO, Ian Murdock, creator of Debian GNU/Linux, tell how the FSG works collaboratively with the open source community to support the continued progress of Linux and other key open source software, and ensure that end users do not suffer the same type of lock in that traps licensees of proprietary software products."

2 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Fear of fork. by killjoe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The article summary is a bit of a flamebait. In order for a product to fork there must be two forces in action.
    1) Licensing that allows a fork.
    2) Frustrated users who feel like they can't shape the future of the product via existing channels.

    This is why there are at least three forks of java and none of perl. I suppose one could argue that the forks of Java are not true forks but attempts at re-engineering but the end result is the same.

    Will linux fork like Unix? Well in a way it already has, there is real time kernel, different kernels for devices etc but not in the way the article talks about it. The article isn't talking about forks per se it's talking about distros. The author seems to have missed the point that the Unix forks were actual forks in the kernel not "just" distros.

    Weird article really. Kind of pointless too.

    --
    evil is as evil does
  2. But who IS certified? by wandm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd like to support the nonfragmentation of Linux - as I guess many would. But looking at the LSB 3.0 certified list http://freestandards.org/en/Products, just shows Red Hat, SUSE and Asianux. Are these all the choices I have?

    Could someone please explain me?