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]

Free Standards Group
AbbreviationFSG
SuccessorLinux Foundation
FoundedMay 8, 2000; 24 years ago (2000-05-08)[1]
DissolvedJanuary 22, 2007; 17 years ago (2007-01-22)[2]
Merger ofOpen Source Development Labs
TypeNonprofit organization
Focusopen standards, free software movement[3]
Location
Region
Worldwide

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

edit

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

edit

Not-for-profit members

edit

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

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ a b 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. ^ a b "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. ^ a b "The Free Standards Group: A Brief Introduction". Retrieved 2020-12-17.