At the Open Source Business Conference, the Free Standards Group, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing and promoting open source software standards, and the Linux Standard Base (LSB) workgroup announced that the LSB has achieved unanimous official approval as an ISO standard – an important milestone signifying the maturity and scope of both the LSB and the Linux operating system.

The LSB was approved as a Publicly Available Specification (PAS) by ISO/IEC (the International Standardization Organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission), pre-eminent international standard-setting organizations whose standards are frequently referenced by many governments and transnational organizations such as the WTO. The ISO standard will be published as International Standard 23360.

“ISO approval is an important achievement for the Linux industry,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group. “This achievement reflects the maturity of the standard and the wide ranging support for Linux distributions, hardware vendors, ISVs and community members.

"This official designation gives a clear sign to everyone in the Linux community that the future of the Linux standardization lies with the Free Standards Group and the LSB. The availability of, and support for, the LSB will continue to grow the Linux ecosystem and improve the availability of applications on Linux.”

A well supported, international standard for Linux is a necessary component of Linux’s continued success. 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.