The Free Standards Group was an industry non-profit

consortium A consortium (plural: consortia) is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for ...

chartered to primarily specify and drive the adoption of

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

standards Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ...

. It was founded on May 8, 2000. All standards developed by the Free Standards Group (FSG) were released under open terms (the

GNU Free Documentation License The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the r ...

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 OSDL merged to form The Linux Foundation, narrowing their respective focuses to that of promoting Linux in competition with

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Work groups

FSG responsibility for the following work groups has now transferred to The Linux Foundation: * The Linux Standard Base (LSB), a set of interface standards allowing for the 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 The Linux Assigned Names and Numbers Authority (LANANA) is a central registry of names and numbers used within Linux. It was created in 2000 by H. Peter Anvin. As of 2013, it along with Filesystem Hierarchy Standard matters had moved under the Lin ...

(LANANA) * OpenPrinting, creating a scalable printing architecture and high-level requirements for a standardized printing system * Accessibility, developing

accessibility Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...

standards for free and open source platforms * Open Cluster, defining a set of clustering interface standards * The DWARF

Debugging In computer programming and software development, debugging is the process of finding and resolving '' bugs'' (defects or problems that prevent correct operation) within computer programs, software, or systems. Debugging tactics can involve in ...

Format Standard

Corporate members

* Advanced Micro Devices *

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

Intel Corporation Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series ...

* International Business Machines * Mandriva * Miracle Linux * Google * MontaVista *

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

(Platinum Member) *

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

* SCO Group *

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...

(through its acquisition of

SUSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...

) * Turbolinux * VA Software

Not-for-profit members

* (JLA) * Linux International (LI) * Linux Professional Institute (LPI) * Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) *

PC Open Architecture Developers' Group PC Open Architecture Developers' Group (OADG, Japanese: ) is a consortium of the major Japanese personal computer manufacturers. Sponsored by IBM during the 1990s, it successfully guided Japan's personal computer manufacturing companies at that tim ...

(OADG) * Software in the Public Interest (SPI) *

Software Liberty Association of Taiwan Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists o ...

(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

{{authority control Organizations disestablished in 2007 Free and open-source software organizations Linux Foundation Standards organizations in the United States Companies established in 1998

Work groups

Corporate members

Not-for-profit members

See also

References