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Standard to ease Linux programming

By Stephen Shankland
mailto:stephens@cnet.com
Special to ZDNet News
July 3, 2001 4:46 AM PT

An industry group has released the first version of a standard designed to
make it easier to write Linux software by guaranteeing that different
versions of Linux work similarly.
The Free Standards Group http://www.freestandards.org/ released version 1.0
of the Linux Standard Base http://www.linuxbase.org/ specification Friday, a
move aimed at reducing the difficulties of getting software such as Oracle's
database to run on versions of Linux from Red Hat, Debian, SuSE and others.

With Windows, computer users assume programs will run on the operating
system without having to be changed. But variations among different versions
of Linux mean that applications often have to be tweaked for each flavor of
the open-source operating system. "An application will run on different
versions of Linux, but it takes some doing sometimes," said Scott McNeil,
executive director of the nonprofit Free Standards Group.

LSB in effect standardizes many of the basic parts of Linux while allowing
companies to add their own features atop that foundation, McNeil said. He
likened the situation to standardizing an automobile as having wheels, an
engine, a steering wheel and a windshield but allowing automakers to build
everything from pickup trucks to race cars.

Further standardizing Linux is a key part of making it easier for companies
to make software that works on Linux. But McNeil doesn't believe it will
remove the need for companies to certify their software as working with a
particular version of Linux.

Red Hat is the dominant seller of Linux. But executives from competitors
Caldera and Turbolinux hope a standard version of Linux will help them gain
more of an advantage by reducing the difficulties software companies face in
supporting several versions of Linux.

The LSB effort was nascent for months before gaining steam last fall, McNeil
said.

Volunteers began LSB years ago, joined soon after by the major sellers of
the Linux, a clone of the venerable Unix operating system that started
gaining commercial acceptance in 1998. More recently, hardware giants such
as Hewlett-Packard, Compaq Computer and IBM threw some of their own weight
behind the effort, and the Free Standards Group was formed in May 2000 to
oversee the effort.

"The Linux community by itself was unable to produce an LSB. It's a lot of
work, and it's not very sexy," McNeil said.

About 25 people are involved, he said. "Compaq is the latest to put
engineers on the effort," he added.

A near-final copy of LSB was posted in May. Now the LSB effort is
concentrating on creating test software that will make sure a version of
Linux complies with the standard and with making sure higher-level software
uses Linux features properly.

The testing software is in beta testing and will be released in final form
by the end of the year, McNeil said. Also by that time, the Free Standards
Group will start offering LSB certification, he said.