Free Standards Group

Free Standards Group

Abbreviation	FSG
Successor	Linux Foundation
Founded	May 8, 2000;24 years ago (2000-05-08) [1]
Dissolved	January 22, 2007;18 years ago (2007-01-22) [2]
Merger of	Open Source Development Labs
Type	Nonprofit organization
Focus	open standards, free software movement [3]
Location	San Francisco [3]
Region	Worldwide

The Free Standards Group was an industry non-profit consortium chartered to primarily specify and drive the adoption of open source standards, founded on May 8, 2000. ^[1]

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.

On January 22, 2007, the Free Standards Group and the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) merged to form The Linux Foundation, narrowing their focus to promoting Linux in competition with Microsoft Windows. ^[2]

Work groups

FSG was responsible for the following work groups, and transferred responsibility to The Linux Foundation:

• The Linux Standard Base (LSB), a set of interface standards to maintain ultimate portability of applications across various Linux versions and distributions. Conformance with this specification is certified by The Open Group (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, 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 Debugging Format Standard

Corporate members

Advanced Micro Devices Dell Hewlett-Packard Intel Corporation International Business Machines Linuxcare Mandriva Miracle Linux Google

MontaVista Oracle Corporation (Platinum Member) Red Hat SCO Group Sun Microsystems Novell (through its acquisition of SUSE) Turbolinux VA Software

Not-for-profit members

• Japan Linux Association  [ Wikidata ] (JLA)
• Linux International (LI)
• Linux Professional Institute (LPI)
• Open Source Development Labs (OSDL)
• PC Open Architecture Developers' Group (OADG)
• Software in the Public Interest (SPI)
• Software Liberty Association of Taiwan (SLAT)
• The Open Group
• USENIX Association

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

See also

• Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS)

References

1. Zovod, Sharon (2000-05-08). "Linux Standard for Software Development Moves Closer to Reality". The Free Standards Group (Press release). Archived from the original on 2000-08-18.
2. "New Linux Foundation Launches – Merger of Open Source Development Labs and Free Standards Group" (Press release). The Linux Foundation. 2007-01-22. Archived from the original on 2008-04-08. Retrieved 2007-01-22. Computing is entering a world dominated by two platforms: Linux and Windows.
3. "The Free Standards Group: A Brief Introduction" . Retrieved 2020-12-17.