Linux Standard Base 3.0 Spec Unveiled

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

When only one operating system vendor is in control of the operating system, you don't need standards bodies and you don't need cooperation among the very many smart people who make up the intellectual ecosystem of a platform. So standards bodies are something of an anomaly as well as an enigma in the operating system arena--particularly after the way the Open Software Foundation and Unix International proved how well platform providers could work together in the 1980s and 1990s.

No one wants a repeat of what happened to Unix, with different Unixes diverging into warring camps and incompatible code bases. To its credit, the OSF was trying to establish a vendor-neutral specification for Unix (which is now under control of the Open Group), and to the credit of Sun Microsystems and AT&T, the dominant Unix providers of the day, they were trying to create a unified BSD and System V Unix, which indeed came to market as Unix System V Release 4 and which was put under control of Unix International, a standards body they set up. The launch of Unix SVR4 and the establishment of Unix International caused the establishment of OSF, which had died out by 1994 but which had spawned the creation of OSF/1, a version of Unix that was based on the Mach kernel from Carnegie Mellon University (a BSD derivative) and which had features common to AIX, HP-UX, and Tru64 Unix.

So far, Linux appears to be Linux at most of the levels that are important, and the Free Standards Group, a non-profit organization that is trying to keep Linux distributions all pulling in the same direction, announced the Linux Standard Base 3.0 specification was available on September 19. All the usual suspects were on hand to provide their support for the LSB 3.0 spec, including: Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, Turbolinux, the Debian Common Core Alliance (a consortium of Debian Linux providers), and Asianux (a partnership of Red Flag Linux, Miracle Linux, and Haansoft Linux). The Debian Common Core Alliance is made up of Debian distributors Progeny, Credativ, Knoppix, LinEx, Linspire, Mepis, Sun Wah Linux, UserLinux, and Xandros, who are also distributing products based on the "Sarge" Debian 3.1 release. Back in August, when the DCCA was launched, all of these Linux distributors agreed to adhere to the LSBase 3.0 specification, and they became the first Linux distros to do so. Server makers like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sun Microsystems and chip makers AMD and Intel threw their weight behind LSB 3.0, as they have the prior LSB specs.

In making the LSB 3.0 specification announcement, the Free Standards Group made the point about why cooperation among all Linux distributors is important. "A well-supported standard for Linux is the necessary component to Linux's continued success," the standards body said in its statement. "Without a commonly adopted standard, Linux will fragment, thus proving costly for ISVs to port their applications to the operating system and making it difficult for end users and Linux vendors alike. With the LSB, all parties--distribution vendors, ISVs and end users--benefit as it becomes easier and less costly for software vendors to target Linux, resulting in more applications available for the Linux platform. The vision of a standard Linux balances the needs of the competitive distribution ecosystem with the requirements of end users and independent software vendors for interoperability." Well said, really.

But the fact is that a Linux standard makes software development a bit easier and a lot less costly, although someone has to point out that there are enough differences between Linux distributions that independent testing and certification are necessary, as was the case with many Unixes all those years ago.

However, the idea is sound that Linux should include a base set of application programming interfaces (APIs), libraries, and interoperability standards, and the LSB spec also requires vendors to have test suites, development environments, developer documentation, and sample implementations of their Linux platforms. With LSB 3.0, the standards body has added an updated application binary interface (ABI) for C++, which is supported by all Linux suppliers. The new spec also incorporates yet more features of the POSIX standard for Unix, which will make it even easier to port Unix applications to Linux. One new feature, called librt (Realtime Library), allows applications to use POSIX clocks and timers and POSIX shared memory, which eliminates some of the code that needs to be rewritten for a Linux port.

The LSB 3.0 spec is not just a standard for 32-bit X86 and 64-bit X64 Linuxes, but covers 32-bit and 64-bit PowerPC platforms, 32-bit S/390 and 64-bit zSeries mainframes, and 64-bit Itanium platforms as well. Supporting LSB 3.0 does not require a Linux distributor to support all platforms, of course. It just means that on the platforms you do support, you do it the LSB 3.0 way.

On the same day that the LSB 3.0 spec was announced, the Free Standards Group said that middleware and database software vendor Computer Associates had joined the body and will be one of the key members of a new sub-project in the group that will focus on Linux systems management standardization. NTT Data, an arm of the Japanese telecom giant, also joined the LSB project, as did Open Country, a supplier of Linux development tools. NTT will work on the Free Standard Group's software internationalization project, Open Internationalization Initiative (OpenI18N), while Open Country is joining the systems management project with CA. IBM and HP will undoubtedly soon be involved in that one, too.