LSB to Provide Standards as Optional Modules

An anonymous reader writes "The LSB will begin providing certain standards as optional modules to the core LSB standard that will enable standards flexibility and allow for a wider variety of standards, eWeek is reporing Free Standards Group officials said at the OSDL Enterprise Linux Summit today. The article goes on to say that the FSG is also looking at possibly franchising out the application certification component of the LSB to the distribution providers themselves."

Wait just a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Optional' standards?


Explain to me why this makes any sense.

Please explain this to me

[goldspider]

What is the point of having so many standards? Why have all these "standards" if everyone is using a different one?

I always regarded standards as some level of uniformity and consistency. And yes, I know that standards restrictions can impede innovation, but I think there's a time when one "best" method of doing something should be chosen as THE standard.

Re:Wait just a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

Say, someone may want to compile VIDEO for LINUX modules, but may not want to take the arduous time required to actually go about recompiling the kernel and doing everything for oneself, but some distributions (like knoppmyth) may want to include video packages and still remain within the LINUX standard base. So ha.

Closed standards for Open Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it me, or does anyone else find it ironic that the main standards effort for Linux distros (LSB) has been closed to Debian and other community efforts? While instead catering to the big, commercial interests.

We don't need closed standards for Open Source.

Re:Because evolution works.

[IamTheRealMike]

Think about it. Darwin/Aqua is a totally new thing that took them about five years, drawing from the same kind of open resources available to Linux at the time.

I must have missed the point at which desktop Linux had 1000+ developers working on it and a billion dollars to play with.

In five years, they had a completely new OS shipped and ready.

No, they did massive imports from code bases they either bought or were BSD licensed. It's certainly not "completely new".

On the other hand, Linux has been around for an entire decade now, and the desktops still look like they're competing with Windows 98 in a non-accelerated, 2D world of "Start" menus and taskbars.

Linux has had hardware accelerated graphics for a very long time now. You must mean hardware window compositing, but ... wait. It has that too, albiet still an immature implementation you need a good box to run. But that's true of MacOS and Longhorn as well.

I won't bother replying to the rest as it's simply provocative opinion (there's a shorter word for that).