Linux Foundation Press Releases

Linux Kernel Developers Issue Statement re: Open Drivers

jennifer — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:03:59 +0000

The Linux kernel development community has joined together to release a strong statement about the need for open source device drivers.

While the vast majority of devices now have open source drivers, there are a few holdouts. The kernel community wants to send a clear signal to these vendors as well as prevent any future vendors from following the closed source path and preventing their uses from getting all the benefits of Linux’s open development model.

More than 135 people have signed the statement, which can be read here

Linux Foundation Reports Highlights from Annual Collaboration Summit

jennifer — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:54:17 +0000

Linux Foundation Reports Highlights from Annual Collaboration Summit

More than 300 Linux and open source leaders advance the operating system at Summit

SAN FRANCISCO – April 24, 2008 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced highlights resulting from its second Annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, which was hosted by IBM in Austin, Texas earlier this month. Attendance at this year’s Summit grew more than 30 percent over last year’s and included leaders from the kernel community, desktop, industry and end users communities.

“The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is the only place where key leaders and stakeholders in Linux come together to discuss the most important issues facing the operating system,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “This year we saw breakthroughs in driver support for the desktop, IPV6 compliance and virtualization. We feel it’s an important venue for solving cross-industry and cross-community issues.”

Highlights from the LF Collaboration Summit include:

• OEMs rally behind Open Source Drivers. One-third of the Summit attendees participated in the Linux Foundation’s fifth Desktop Architects’ Meeting. In Austin, leading computer manufacturers Dell, HP, Lenovo, and many others met with the desktop community to collaborate and optimize Linux for their new desktop and ultra-mobile products. A key result from the meeting was that these OEM vendors reported that they will encourage chipset and other component vendors to provide open source drivers for Linux. The companies announced on stage that they will now include wording in their hardware procurement processes to “strongly encourage” the delivery of open source drivers for transparent integration into the Linux kernel. Asustek Computer, Inc., manufacturer of the popular Linux-based Eee PC, is also encouraging its hardware suppliers to provide open source drivers for Linux. VIA Technology also announced the opening of their drivers and better support for the open source community at the Summit.

• New Driver Backporting Workgroup. Canonical, Novell, Red Hat, and others have formed this new workgroup to speed the process for porting new drivers to older versions Linux. This effort is expected to help solve one of the most important commercial issues for companies that ship Linux by improving time-to-market and enabling the automated installation of the newest drivers on older versions of Linux. While Linux driver support is the broadest in the world, many commercial companies use older versions of Linux in their products that don’t include the latest driver support. The Driver Backporting Workgroup will address this issue by implementing a process that simplifies packaging, distribution and installation of drivers, including matching the right drivers with different hardware components. For more details on the Workgroup, please visit: http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Driver_Backport_Charter

• Next-generation Internet Compliance (IPv6). At last year’s Summit, IBM identified the IPv6 protocols as an area where immediate collaboration was required in order for Linux to be primed for the next-generation of the Internet. This is important because of government purchasing requirements stipulating this support. Since then, Bull, IBM, HP, Nokia-Siemens, Novell and Red Hat have made contributions and at this year’s Summit in Austin, the IPv6 work group was able to announce that Linux is IPv6 compliant to DoD mandated requirements. While there is still work to do to address the additional emerging requirements, this is a concrete example of vendors coming together at the Collaboration Summit to solve a pressing issue for Linux.

• Linux on Mobile Devices. The Summit hosted for the first time representatives of all the mobile Linux platforms — Android, Moblin.org, GNOME Mobile, and LiMo – on one stage. The groups agreed on the enormous value of using the Linux kernel to efficiently manage any hardware, but shared their differing views on which higher-level software components provide the best environment for developer applications. Representatives from the platforms evaluated the potential of using the multi-million dollar database and test infrastructure of the Linux Foundation’s Linux Standard Base (LSB), which is available under an open source license as an application and device compliance solution.

• Virtualization Mini-Summit. At the Summit, leaders from the various virtualization projects (Xen, KVM, lguest, VMware, qemu and others) met to solve issues and collaborate on common objectives. This included work on interfaces, qemu and the lack of upstream interest in x86 virtualization specific patches. The result of this meeting will be enhancements to the virtualization capabilities of Linux.

Also at the Summit, IDC’s Vice President of Research, Al Gillen, presented a new IDC White Paper titled The Role of Linux Servers in Commercial Workloads. The white paper, sponsored by The Linux Foundation, outlines the state of the Linux server market and can be downloaded at: http://www.linux-foundation.org/publications/IDC_Workloads.pdf.

Video interviews with Linux and open source leaders at the LF Collaboration Summit will be available soon on the Linux Foundation events site at https://www.linux-foundation.org/events/. In addition, real-time video was taken directly from the Summit and is available at YouTube. See short takes with Google’s Jeremy Allison, The 451 Group’s Raven Zachary, Hyperic’s Javier Soltero and others at www.youtube.com/thelinuxfoundation.

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is heralded as the only place where Linux community developers, distribution and system vendors, ISVs, and end users meet face-to-face and collaborate. While there are a variety of industry and developer conferences, the Summit is the only one to bridge the worlds of community and industry, while allowing end users to access and influence these two important groups. It is designed to accelerate collaboration and problem solving in the Linux community by bringing key stakeholders together in a neutral setting.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms. For more information, please visit www.linux-foundation.org.

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Trademarks: The Linux Foundation and Linux Standard Base are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Third party marks and brands are the property of their respective holders.

The Linux Foundation’s Annual Collaboration Summit Kicks Off

jennifer — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:54:31 +0000

The Linux Foundation’s Annual Collaboration Summit Kicks Off

Linux and open source leaders work together on next steps for the operating system

Austin, Texas – April 8, 2008 — The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today will kick off its annual Collaboration Summit. The brightest minds in the Linux server, desktop and mobile communities, among others, will gather at the UT Super Computing Center in Austin, Texas to determine how to advance the operating system in the year ahead.

Keynotes and panels will address some of the following topics:

What are the technology trends and the economics driving the Linux desktop in new low cost PC’s? Find out directly from AMD, Asus, Dell, Everex, HP, Intel, Lenovo, TI, and more.

What is the “M” commitment to the “L” in LAMP after the Sun acquisition of MySQL? Find out from Marten Mikos, SVP, Database Group, Sun Microsystems.

When am I going to get my hands on a Linux phone? Find out from Google’s OHA, the LiMo Foundation, OpenMoko, and others. This is the first time Google’s OHA and the LiMo Foundation are sharing a stage.

Where is Red Hat headed? Find out from the CTO of Red Hat Brian Stephens.

Also at the Summit today, IDC Vice President of Research, Al Gillen, will present a new IDC White Paper titled The Role of Linux Servers in Commercial Workloads. The white paper, sponsored by The Linux Foundation, outlines the state of the Linux server market and considers the increasing shift in Linux deployments from infrastructure-oriented workloads to mainstream business-oriented workloads. It predicts significant growth and strong long-term prospects, with the overall Linux ecosystem spend increasing from $21 billion in 2007 to nearly $50 billion in 2011.

The IDC paper can be downloaded at: http://www.linux-foundation.org/publications/IDC_Workloads.pdf.

“The Linux market is expanding, just as the workloads for Linux deployments are expanding. We will work with the community and industry over the next three days and into the rest of the year on how to fuel this growth,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation.

Other keynotes and panels to be delivered today will come from Linux kernel developers and representatives at Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Oracle, Red Hat, and Via Technology, among others.

The Summit is heralded as the only place where Linux community developers, distribution and system vendors, ISVs, and end users meet face-to-face and collaborate. While there are a variety of industry and developer conferences, the LF Collaboration Summit is the only one to bridge the worlds of community and industry, while allowing end users to access and influence these two important groups. It is designed to accelerate collaboration and problem solving in the Linux community by bringing key stakeholders together in a neutral setting.

Linux Foundation Publishes Study on Linux Development Statistics: Who Writes Linux and Who Supports It

jennifer — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:14:52 +0000

Linux Foundation Publishes Study on Linux Development Statistics: Who Writes Linux and Who Supports It

A close look at Linux kernel development process reveals the number of Linux kernel developers has tripled over the last three years

SAN FRANCISCO – April 1, 2008 — The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced it is publishing a new report written by kernel developers Jonathan Corbet and Greg Kroah-Hartman, and LF Director of Marketing Amanda McPherson.

The report titled “Linux Kernel Development: How Fast is it Going, Who is doing it and Who is Sponsoring it?” is available today at https://www.linux-foundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php. The paper finds that over the last three years the number of developers contributing to the kernel has tripled and that there has been a significant increase in the number of companies supporting kernel development.

Even though Linux has achieved near-ubiquity as a technology platform powering Internet applications, corporate servers, embedded and mobile devices and desktops, mainstream users know very little about how Linux is actually developed. This community paper exposes those dynamics and describes a large and distributed developer and corporate community that supports the expansion and innovation of the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel has become a common resource developed on a massive scale by companies who are fierce competitors in other areas.

Corbet and Kroah-Hartman, key kernel developers themselves and members of the Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board (TAB), reviewed nearly three years of kernel history representing Linux releases 2.6.11 through 2.6.24. The report goes into detail on how the Linux development process works, including who is contributing, how often and why.

Highlights include:

• Who is Writing Linux?
o Every Linux kernel is being developed by nearly 1,000 developers working for more than 100 different corporations. This is the foundation for the largest distributed software development project in the world.
o Since 2005, the number of active kernel developers has tripled, reflecting the growing importance of Linux in the embedded systems, server, and desktop markets.
o Between 70 and 95 percent of those developers are being paid for their work, dispelling the “hobbyist” myth present from the start of open source development.

• Who is Sponsoring Linux?
o More than 70 percent of total contributions to the kernel come from developers working at a range of companies including IBM, Intel, The Linux Foundation, MIPS Technology, MontaVista, Movial, NetApp, Novell and Red Hat. These companies, and many others, find that by improving the kernel they have a competitive edge in their markets.

• How Fast is Linux Developed and Released?
o An average of 3,621 lines of code are added to the kernel tree every day, and a new kernel is released approximately every 2.7 months.
o The kernel, since 2005, has been growing at a steady state of 10 percent per year.

“Never before in the history of computing have there been so many companies, users and developers united behind one project, specifically one that has seen so much commercial success,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “This rate of innovation is unsurpassed in software. We’re pleased to publish this valuable community content from members of our Technical Advisory Board.”

The Linux Foundation’s TAB is comprised of leading Linux developers who advise the LF on technical requirements and issues important to the kernel community. Kernel community members James Bottomley, Jonathan Corbet, Dave Jones, Christoph Lameter, Ted Ts’o, Chris Wright, and others will participate in a panel on the State of Linux at the LF’s Collaboration Summit next week. For more information on the Summit, please visit: https://www.linux-foundation.org/events/collaboration.

Jonathan Corbet is also the editor of Linux information source LWN.net and maintains the Linux Foundation’s Linux Weather Forecast.

Greg Kroah-Hartman is a Novell Fellow, working for the SuSE labs division of the company. He is also the Linux kernel maintainer for the PCI, USB, driver core, debugfs, kref, kobject, and the sysfs kernel subsystems, and leads the Linux Driver Project: www.linuxdriverproject.org.

Amanda McPherson is director of marketing at the LF and leads its promote and community-relations activities.

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Adobe Joins Linux Foundation with Focus on Linux for Web 2.0 Applications

jennifer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:57:37 +0000

Adobe Joins Linux Foundation with Focus on Linux for Web 2.0 Applications

SAN FRANCISCO, March 31, 2008 – The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Adobe Systems Incorporated is joining the Foundation. Adobe is joining the LF to collaborate on the advancement of Linux as a leading platform for rich Internet applications (RIA) and Web 2.0 technologies.

“Adobe’s decision to join the LF is a natural extension of its commitment to open standards and open source, which demonstrates its leadership and foresight in the software industry,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “Adobe’s membership will contribute to our goal of increasing even more application development on Linux with a specific emphasis on Web 2.0 applications.”

“Adobe delivers key RIA technologies for Linux users, such as Adobe® Flash® Player and now Adobe AIR™, to deploy RIAs in the browser and on the desktop,” said David McAllister, director of standards and open source at Adobe. “The Linux Foundation is a valuable resource, providing a forum where we can work with the community to ensure Adobe RIA technologies are compatible across the Linux software platform.”

Today, application development is increasing on the Internet, where Linux is the platform of choice for Amazon, Facebook, Google, and many others. The Linux development community offers an active, collaborative environment where software developers can increase their innovation related to new web-based technologies and opportunities.

Adobe will join other LF members at the Linux Foundation’s Annual Collaboration Summit next week in Austin, TX. The Collaboration Summit, which included more than 230 leaders from the Linux community during its debut year in 2007, is designed to accelerate collaboration and problem solving by bringing together key stakeholders together in a neutral setting. To apply for registration, please visit: https://www.linux-foundation.org/events/collaboration.

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Trademarks: The Linux Foundation and Linux Standard Base are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Adobe, Flash and AIR are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Third party marks and brands are the property of their respective holders.

The Linux Foundation Hosts Legal Spring Summit

jennifer — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:22:04 +0000

The Linux Foundation Hosts Spring Legal Summit

Industry’s top open source legal experts share experiences at exclusive Linux Foundation Summit

SAN FRANCISCO, March 26, 2007 – The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the details for its second Legal Summit, which will be held at the Motorola Customer Briefing Center in Schaumburg, Ill on April 23, 2008.

To register, please visit https://www.linux-foundation.org/events/legal.

The LF Legal Summits provide an important vendor-neutral forum for leading in-house counsel from member companies HP, IBM, Intel, Novel, Oracle, Red Hat and others, to collaborate in the development of programs to address legal issues surrounding Linux and open source software. The Summits are led by the LF’s legal team Karen Copenhaver and Andy Updegrove.

“The Legal Summits are an important component of the LF’s event roster. They provide a unique opportunity for in-house counsel to cut through the FUD and discuss what successful companies are doing to realize the benefits of Linux and open source while meeting the requirements of today’s legal environment,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation.

The Summit will include panels, question and answer periods, and breaks for networking. Discussion topics will include: how open source projects work; how licenses for open source projects can be determined and confirmed; and how companies develop effective compliance policies providing for both the use of open source software in business operations and contributions by employees back to community projects. Counsel will also share their experiences releasing commercial offerings under an open source license and the challenge of building communities around the contributions.

The first LF Legal Summit was held October 25 - 26, 2007 in Boston and focused on effective ways to collaborate in the development of compliance, education programs, and evolving intellectual property rights policies optimized to support open development models.

For companies and organizations interested in attending these member-only events but who are not currently LF members, please contact membership@linuxfoundation.org.

The recently launched blog on open source legal matters is available at: www.linux-foundation.org/blogs/legal.

The Linux Foundation Reveals Speaker Line-up for 2nd Annual Collaboration Summit

jennifer — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:41:56 +0000

The Linux Foundation Reveals Speaker Line-up for 2nd Annual Collaboration Summit

Kernel developers, leading market research firm and companies such as Dell, HP, IBM, MySQL, and Oracle will debate growth opportunities for the platform

SAN FRANCISCO – March 11, 2008 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the speakers for its 2nd Annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit.

The Summit, heralded as the only place where Linux kernel developers, distribution and system vendors, ISVs, and end users meet face-to-face and collaborate, takes place April 8 – 10, 2008 at the UT Super Computing Center in Austin, TX.

The Collaboration Summit is designed to accelerate collaboration and problem solving in the Linux community by bringing key stakeholders together in a neutral setting. While there are a variety of industry and developer conferences, the LF Collaboration Summit is the only one to combine participation from developers, users, vendors, ISVs, attorneys and C-level executives to tackle the most pressing issues facing Linux.
To apply for registration, please visit: https://www.linux-foundation.org/events/collaboration.

Last year’s over-subscribed Summit took place June 13- 15, 2007 at the Google Mountain View Campus and included more than 230 leaders from the Linux community.

Agenda highlights for the 2nd Annual LF Collaboration Summit include:

• Fresh from his $1 billion acquisition by Sun, MySQL’s CEO Marten Mickos will describe his plans for the future, including MySQL’s commitment to the “L in the LAMP” stack.

• Where is Linux growing? Al Gillen, research vice president at analyst firm IDC, will unveil important new data on Linux deployments worldwide.

• Kernel Developer Panel. The Summit will be kicked off by a panel of key Kernel developers and maintainers including James Bottomley, Jonathan Corbet, Dave Jones, Christoph Lameter, Ted Ts’o, Chris Wright, and others. This is a unique opportunity to hear directly from these developers.

• Mobile Landscape. The last twelve months have seen an explosion in Linux on mobile devices. Executive representatives from LiMO, Moblin.org, the new Open Handset Alliance and OpenMoko will address fragmentation and how they’re working together to build the future’s mobile computing platform.

• In the last year, there has also been tremendous growth of Linux pre-installed on desktop and ultra-mobile devices. This market is continuing to explode with dozens of design wins. Find out now what is behind this growing trend from senior representatives from Dell, Everex, gOS (maker of the CloudBook), HP, Lenovo, and VIA Technologies.

• The titans of the Linux industry are growing products and service offerings on top of Linux. The 451 Group’s Raven Zachary will moderate a panel of these influential industry leaders including: Wim Coekaerts, vice president of Linux engineering at Oracle; Dan Frye, vice president of open systems development at IBM; Christine Martino, HP’s vice president of open source and Linux; and Christy Wyatt, vice president, ecosystem and market development for Motorola’s Mobile Devices business. They will share what Linux means to their companies and where it’s headed.

• Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens will give a keynote address on the future of Linux from Red Hat’s perspective.

“This year’s LF Collaboration Summit has attracted a veritable who’s who of Linux leaders,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “We’re looking forward to a packed house and a lively group. These people will be defining the agenda for the next stage of mass collaboration, and in order to fuel that collaboration we need to make participation in the Linux ecosystem as easy and efficient as possible.”

This unique, invitation-only event brings together the brightest minds
in the Linux ecosystem to collaborate on the advancement of the Linux platform. In addition to plenary sessions, workgroup and breakout sessions include: Desktop Architects, the Virtualization Mini-Summit, Mobile and Embedded Linux, Power Management on Linux and Carrier Grade Linux. All of the key players necessary to make real and immediate contributions to the platform will be in attendance.

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New Linux Foundation Board Members Elected

jennifer — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:35:44 +0000

New Linux Foundation Board Members Elected

LF Board of Directors represents community, business and individual interests

SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2008 – The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the results of its annual Board of Directors election. The LF board is comprised of all LF membership classes as well as individual affiliates.

New board members elected during this cycle include Linux and open-source expert Larry Augustin, Advanced Micro Device’s Chris Schlaeger and Texas Instrument’s Eric Thomas. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, has been re-elected as an individual member to the board. James Bottomley was also re-elected as the Technical Advisory Board’s (TAB) representative to the board. The TAB is a collection of community developers and provides the Linux kernel community a direct voice into The Linux Foundation’s activities.

“The Linux Foundation board represents all Linux stakeholders – kernel developers, individual community members, vendors and users. We’re very pleased that our board continues to comprise such distinguished contributors to the Linux platform,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation.

Augustin is an angel investor and advisor to early stage technology companies. In 1993 he founded VA Linux (now SourceForge, NASDAQ:LNUX), where he served as CEO until August 2002.

Bottomley is an active member of the Linux kernel and open source communities. He maintains the SCSI subsystem, the MCA subsystem, and the Linux Voyager port and the 53c700 driver.

Schlaeger is Director of the Operating System Research Center at AMD. Prior to AMD he worked as VP of Engineering for Novell and SUSE.

Elected as an individual representative to the LF board for the second year in a row, Shuttleworth is founder of the Ubuntu Project, a popular Debian-based Linux distribution with both desktop and enterprise server editions.

Thomas has fifteen years of experience contributing to mobile handset design and has been one of the key advocates driving the definition of Texas Instrument’s software strategy to enable Linux-based handset manufacturers to further differentiate their offerings.

LF board members serving under their current term include:
• Alan Clark, Novell
• Wim Coekaerts, Oracle
• Masahiro Date, Fujitsu
• Frank Fanzilli
• Doug Fisher, Intel
• Dan Frye, IBM
• Hisashi Hashimoto, Hitachi
• Christine Martino, HP
• Brian Pawlowski, NetApp
• Tsugikazu Shibata, NEC
• Christy Wyatt, Motorola

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The Linux Foundation Expands Membership with Addition of Texas Instruments

jennifer — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:34:55 +0000

The Linux Foundation Expands Membership with Addition of Texas Instruments

SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2008 – The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Texas Instruments (TI) is joining the Foundation. With its new membership, TI will help foster the growth of the Linux platform and collaborate with industry leaders who define both technical and operational best practices around open source software.

TI brings a long history of supporting the advancement of embedded and mobile Linux devices. The company’s OMAP™ platform of multimedia-rich application processors is widely recognized, and its work to integrate software and hardware for the mobile and portable electronics markets continues to spur the growth of Linux on consumer devices. DaVinci™ technology, also from TI, combines the processing technology, software, development tools and ecosystem to make video system development easy. By working with the Linux Foundation’s workgroups and participating in its member-only summits, TI will further ensure that its customers have the necessary tools to create innovative and differentiated Linux-based mobile devices that use the OMAP platform and DaVinci technology.

“Texas Instruments has an important perspective on mobile and embedded Linux, and we’re very excited to welcome them to the Foundation,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “Linux is experiencing huge growth in the embedded and mobile markets – it’s no surprise that a mobile leader like TI would want to foster collaboration with the community by supporting the Foundation’s efforts.”

Industry studies continue to forecast aggressive growth for mobile and embedded Linux. For example, ABI Research recently reported that by 2012, more than 127 million devices will run with a commercial Linux OS, up from 8.1 million in 2007. Additionally, device shipments of Linux as an RTOS replacement are set to grow from nearly zero today to more than 76 million units by 2012.

“Texas Instruments views the Linux Foundation as a significant contributor to the Linux community. As the importance of Linux in mobile and embedded markets continues to grow, there is a need to foster the growth of Linux and collaborate with other leading companies. The Linux Foundation workgroups and summits, such as its Collaboration and Legal Summits, allow us to collaborate with people and companies that are driving innovation on the Linux platform,” said Eric Thomas, Open Source Strategic Marketing Manager, Texas Instruments.

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Trademarks: The Linux Foundation and Linux Standard Base are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. OMAP and DaVinci are trademarks of Texas Instruments. Third party marks and brands are the property of their respective holders.

The Linux Foundation Announces Linux Standard Base 3.2

jennifer — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 03:43:00 +0000

The Linux Foundation Announces Linux Standard Base 3.2

Latest LSB updates include new modules for interpreted languages, printing and multimedia

SAN FRANCISCO – February 19, 2008 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced an update of the Linux Standard Base (LSB). The new LSB 3.2 introduces new features for interpreted languages, printing and multimedia, further enabling application developers to easily and cost-effectively support the Linux operating system.

“The LSB meets the increasing demands of ISVs that want to build portable applications for Linux,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “With the inclusion of interpreted languages, printing support, and a variety of other requested features, this release provides the functionality that ISVs need to deliver their sophisticated applications in a portable, cross-distribution format.”

The LSB delivers interoperability between applications and the Linux operating system, allowing application developers to target multiple versions of Linux with only one software package. This allows Linux to compete effectively against proprietary, monolithic platforms. The LSB has marshaled various Linux distribution vendors to certify to its standards, including Debian, Mandriva, Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu and Xandros.

Specific updates to the new LSB 3.2 include new support for interpreted languages Perl and Python. This will enable application developers to ensure that their Perl and Python applications (whether cross-platform or Linux-specific) will work on the vast majority of Linux systems. In addition, the LSB team and the LF’s OpenPrinting Workgroup have collaborated to add printing interfaces to the LSB and support for portable printer drivers. On the important multi-media front, trial support for libasound, the API for the ALSA sound system, has also been added for LSB 3.2, as well as trial support for the Portland Project’s xdg-utils. Using xdg-utils will enable LSB-compliant applications to integrate better with the Linux desktop, and the trial standard for ALSA is an important first step in enabling cross-distribution Linux multimedia applications.

Other features of LSB 3.2 include:

* New “trial use” modules, replacing the former “optional” modules. This will allow the LSB to add new modules more quickly yet not lock certifiers into supporting modules not yet ready.

* Several freedesktop.org standards, including menus and icon themes, making it easier for developers to write applications for the desktop

* Promotion of Qt 4 to a required part of the standard, and deprecation of Qt 3

* FreeType support, through both FreeType and the Xft X extension

* XRender support

The Linux Standard Base 3.2 specification, test suite and developer tools are available today on the Linux Foundation’s web site at http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/LSB_3.2.0. The next major release of the LSB will be released late in 2008.

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