The Free Standards Group was an industry non-profit consortium chartered to primarily specify and drive the adoption of open source standards. It was founded on May 8, 2000. All standards developed by the Free Standards Group (FSG) were released under open terms (the GNU Free Documentation License with no cover texts or invariant sections) and test suites, sample implementations and other software were released as

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

. On January 22, 2007, the Free Standards Group and the

OSDL Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) was a non-profit organization supported by a consortium to promote Linux for enterprise computing. Founded in 2000, OSDL positioned itself as an independent, non-profit lab for developers who are adding enterpris ...

merged to form

The Linux Foundation ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

, narrowing their respective focuses to that of promoting

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

in competition with Microsoft Windows.

Work groups

FSG responsibility for the following work groups has now transferred to The Linux Foundation: * The

Linux Standard Base The Linux Standard Base (LSB) was a joint project by several Linux distributions under the organizational structure of the Linux Foundation to standardize the software system structure, including the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard used in the ...

(LSB), a set of interface standards allowing for the ultimate portability of applications across various Linux versions and distributions. Conformance with this specification is certified by

The Open Group The Open Group is a global consortium that seeks to "enable the achievement of business objectives" by developing "open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." It has over 840 member organizations and provides a number of servi ...

(under contract with the Free Standards Group). * The Open Internationalization Initiative (OpenI18N), a standard that creates a foundation for language globalization of compliant distributions and applications * The Linux Assigned Names and Numbers Authority (LANANA) *

OpenPrinting The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize Linux, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Addi ...

, creating a scalable printing architecture and high-level requirements for a standardized printing system * Accessibility, developing accessibility standards for free and open source platforms * Open Cluster, defining a set of clustering interface standards * The

DWARF Dwarf or dwarves may refer to: Common uses *Dwarf (folklore), a being from Germanic mythology and folklore * Dwarf, a person or animal with dwarfism Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Dwarf (''Dungeons & Dragons''), a humanoid ...

Debugging Format Standard

Corporate members

Advanced Micro Devices Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...

* Dell * Hewlett-Packard * Intel Corporation * International Business Machines *

Mandriva Mandriva S.A. was a public software company specializing in Linux and open-source software. Its corporate headquarters was in Paris, and it had development centers in Metz, France and Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. was the developer and maint ...

Miracle Linux MIRACLE LINUX is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-6 ...

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

MontaVista MontaVista Software is a company that develops embedded Linux system software, development tools, and related software. Its products are made for other corporations developing embedded systems such as automotive electronics, communications equ ...

* Oracle Corporation (Platinum Member) * Red Hat *

SCO Group The SCO Group (often referred to SCO and later called The TSG Group) was an American software company in existence from 2002 to 2012 that became known for owning Unix operating system assets that had belonged to the Santa Cruz Operation (the ...

* Sun Microsystems * Novell (through its acquisition of SUSE) * Turbolinux *

VA Software Geeknet, Inc. is a Fairfax County, Virginia–based company that is a subsidiary of GameStop. The company was formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc. History VA Research VA Research was founded in No ...

Not-for-profit members

* (JLA) *

Linux International Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds: to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its sour ...

(LI) *

Linux Professional Institute The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is a Canadian non-profit organisation and oriented towards certifications for Linux, BSD and open-source software-based technologies. It was founded in October 1999. Linux Professional Institute Certif ...

(LPI) *

Open Source Development Labs Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) was a non-profit organization supported by a consortium to promote Linux for enterprise computing. Founded in 2000, OSDL positioned itself as an independent, non-profit lab for developers who are adding enterpris ...

(OSDL) * PC Open Architecture Developers' Group (OADG) *

Software in the Public Interest Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization domiciled in New York State formed to help other organizations create and distribute free open-source software and open-source hardware. Anyone is eligible to ...

(SPI) * Software Liberty Association of Taiwan (SLAT) *

* USENIX Association The Free Standards Group also had individual memberships; the board of directors was elected annually by all of the membership.

References

{{authority control Organizations disestablished in 2007 Free and open-source software organizations Linux Foundation Standards organizations in the United States Companies established in 1998

Work groups

Corporate members

Not-for-profit members

See also

References