Free Standards Group

The Free Standards Group was an industry non-profit consortium chartered to primarily specify and drive the adoption of open source standards.

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 open source.

On January 22, 2007, the Free Standards group and the OSDL merged to form The Linux Foundation, narrowing their respective focuses to that of promoting Linux in competition with Microsoft Windows. [cite press release
title=New Linux Foundation Launches – Merger of Open Source Development Labs and Free Standards Group
publisher=The Linux Foundation
date=2007-01-22
url=http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/press/2007/01/21/new-linux-foundation-launches-%E2%80%93-merger-of-open-source-development-labs-and-free-standards-group/
accessdate=2007-01-22
quote="Computing is entering a world dominated by two platforms: Linux and Windows."]

Work Groups

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

* The Linux Standard Base is a set of interface standards allowing for the ultimate portability of applications across free and open source platforms. Conformance with this specification is certified by The Open Group (under contract with the Free Standards Group).
* The Open Internationalization Initiative (OpenI18N) is a standard that creates a foundation for language globalization of compliant distributions and applications.
* The Linux Assigned Names and Numbers Authority (LANANA)
* OpenPrinting is creating a scalable printing architecture and high-level requirements for a standardized printing system.
* Accessibility is developing accessibility standards for free and open source platforms.
* Open Cluster is defining a set of clustering interface standards.
* The DWARF Debugging Format Standard.

Corporate members

*AMD
*Dell Computer
*Hewlett-Packard
*Intel
*IBM
*Mandriva
*Miracle Linux
*Google
*MontaVista
* Oracle (Platinum Member)
*Red Hat
*SCO Group
*Sun Microsystems
*Novell (through its acquisition of SUSE)
*Turbolinux
*VA Software

Not-for-profit Members

*Japan Linux Association
*Linux International
*Linux Professional Institute (LPI)
*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.

References