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The Free Standards Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and promoting open-source software standards, announced this week the opening of a Linux certification lab in China.
The lab will certify Linux distributions and applications to the Linux Standard Base and will be maintained by the FSG and the China Electronics Standardization Institute. It is the first certification authority for Linux standards outside of the United States.
National Standard
The new lab aims to ensure that Linux distributions in China adhere to the LSB, which is now the core reference and a necessary component for the Chinese national standard for Linux, the FSG said.
"Technology and standards are key to the Chinese IT industry," noted Han Jun, deputy director of China's Ministry of Information Industry's science and technology department. "A well supported, international standard for Linux is a necessary foundation of Linux's continued success."
"By participating in the LSB, MII expects that the Chinese IT industry will improve competitive advantage through technology innovation and international collaboration and will expand global market opportunities," Han continued.
One of the most important issues facing Linux adoption in China and around the world today is fragmentation, according to the FSG.
"Acceptance of the LSB by the Chinese government provides protection against fragmentation and allows Linux vendors of all kinds to compete fairly in the emerging Chinese market opportunity," the FSG stated.
Backed by Major Firms
Industry leaders -- including IBM (NYSE: IBM), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), AMD (NYSE: AMD), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Novell, Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA), Red Flag Software and Turbolinux -- have pledged to back LSB, which the FSG developed along with a number of tools and test suites to facilitate the creation of a standard Linux version.
Recently, both the International Standardization Organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission approved the LSB as a Publicly Available Specification.
The LSB specification contains a base set of APIs, libraries and interoperability standards, as well as test suites, development environments, sample implementations and developer documentation. Applicants who receive LSB certification can apply for the Free Standards Group trademarks.
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