Linux Standard Base: State of Affairs

The Linux Standard Base (LSB) is a working group at the Linux Foundation that was created to lower the overall costs of supporting the Linux platform. By reducing the differences between individual Linux distributions from the application developer’s point of view, the LSB greatly reduces the costs involved with porting applications to different distributions, as well as lowering the cost and effort involved in after-market support of those applications. This article provides an overview of the LSB, the state of LSB specifications, tools, the compliance process, and lessons learned.

About the Authors

Jeff Licquia is a Software Developer at the Linux Foundation. His Linux experience dates to the early days of Linux, and he has extensive experience bringing Linux into the workplace effectively. He has been working on the LSB since 2005.

Stew Benedict is a Software Developer at the Linux Foundation. He previously worked as a Distribution Developer for Mandrake/Mandriva, working on PPC/IA64 ports and various security initiatives. He has been involved with LSB, first as a distribution representative and later as a developer, for several years.

Vladimir Rubanov is Head of Department at the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISPRAS) and the Director of the LinuxTesting.org Verification Center. He and his team have been actively involved in the LSB Workgroup since 2005. Vladimir holds M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from MIPT University (“Russian MIT”).

Alexey Khoroshilov is a chief architect at the LinuxTesting.org Verification Center. He has been involved in LSB workgroup since 2005. Alexey holds Ph.D. degree from the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISPRAS) and M.Sc. Degree from the Moscow State University.