Squaring the Open Source/Open Standards Circle

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."

Comments

It aint open standards that "killed" Unix

[yeOldeSkeptic]

Unix was killed by the high price of licenses. Unix during the early 1990's was supposed to be for the big boys --- the enterprise customers willing to pay up to 10,000 USD per seat for a Unix license.

With the license for Windows NT starting at less than 1000USD, the enterprises which formed the majority of the paying Unix customer base soon found a way to make do with NT and delete their Unix installations.

It wasn't open standards and the fragmentation that did Unix in, it was plain hubris among the Unix vendors who cannot fathom a future where a cheaper Windows NT would replace the robust, stable and widely admired Unix they are selling.

But who IS certified?

[wandm]

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?

NT didn't displace UNIX

[drsmithy]

It displaced Netware.

Similarly, Linux isn't displacing NT, it's displacing commercial UNIX.

The overlap of functionality between NT and Linux is, really, quite small. There aren't many cases for which Linux is a good solution, where NT could also be (and vice versa).

LSB is a misleading, limiting and silly name

[munro]

The funny thing about the LSB is that it concerns APIs for use by userland programs -it has _absolutlely nothing_ to do with the kernel. All of the requirements for LSB compliance concern calling conventions, executable formats, libc, POSIX facilities, filesystem layout an other extra-kernel configuration, most of which any UNIXoid system could support.

There are no obstacles to Darwin, *BSD and Solaris systems meeting LSB compliance, because it has nothing to do with kernels and everything to do with the specific details of a UNIX userland environment.

Generally I don't get into 'Linux' vs 'GNU' discussions but the LSB is once case where I feel the name 'Linux' is used completely inappropriately.

Re:Fear of fork.

[Enderandrew]

Linux is a kernel, not an OS, but in common parlance, Linux might as well refer to the OS.

As an OS Linux is horribly fragmented. That is why people flock to a popular distro like Ubuntu, regardless of whether or not it is the best distro.

Personally, I do believe that the community needs fewer distros. There should be three methods for installing, period. Something like apt-get, emerge and then installing from a downloaded RPM. You shouldn't see different binaries for different distros. A Linux app should be an Linux app, period.

If we had true standards, we'd have fewer distros. But how many methods and standards do we have for installing programs? For file structures? For menu structures?

In what I believe to be a perfect world, there would only be maybe 8 major distributions of Linux.

Home/Personal
Developer
Media Center
Server

For each of those 4, you get a focus on either GTK or QT apps. Regardless, the file structure, configuration files, menu structure, etc. would be the same for every distro.

And while this will NEVER happen, I think we need one major development kit, instead of GTK vs QT. When it comes to aesthetics, visual style and usability, I can certainly understand people wanting a choice between Gnome and KDE. But when I design an app, I should build it on one toolkit, and then it should work on both Gnome and KDE, letting Gnome/KDE handle how it looks, etc. As it stands now, the dependency chains are ridiculous. If I use KDE but want a few GTK apps like Firefox or GAIM, I have to install half of Gnome.