| Debian founder takes over LSB leadership |
Feb. 02, 2006
The Free Standards Group (FSG), the non-profit group behind the Linux Standard Base (LSB), has announced that Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock will be its new CTO (chief technology officer) and will chair the LSB workgroup.
A spokesperson for the FSG said that as co-founder of Debian Linux and the commercial custom Linux distributor Progeny, Murdock brings unmatched experience building open source communities, driving technical consensus, and solving Linux distribution challenges. Murdock has also been one of the leaders of the DCC Alliance.
In this new job, Murdock will lead all technical initiatives for the FSG, including expanding the development communities involved in each of the FSG's workgroups, and will work directly with the open source community, software developers and systems and distribution vendors.
As LSB workgroup chair, Murdock will lead all workgroup activities and oversee the upcoming release of LSB 3.1. LSB 3.1 adds desktop functionality to the ISO standard LSB core. Art Tyde will continue as the FSG's Chief Certification Officer.
"Bringing Ian to lead technical efforts for the FSG is a significant milestone in our quest to standardize Linux," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the FSG in a statement.
"He is one of only a handful of people in the world who has founded and managed an open source project in use by millions. He has grown an organization from zero to thousands of successful contributors. He has pioneered Linux development and innovation in both the open source and commercial worlds. These accomplishments make him supremely qualified to grow the open standards community that makes up the Free Standards Group and to provide crucial leadership as Linux -- and open source standards -- evolve to challenge the proprietary software of old," said Zemlin.
"Very quickly in my experience with Debian, I knew a standardized Linux was absolutely imperative to growing the Linux marketplace," said Murdock in a statement.
"Developers need a simple way to target Linux, distribution vendors need a core base of functionality to differentiate on top of, and end users need choice and assurance. The Free Standards Group and the Linux Standard Base is the best hope for achieving these goals: it has the momentum, the member support and the community," concluded Murdock.
In an exclusive Linux-Watch interview, Murdock spelled out more of what this new position will mean both for him and for the LSB.
First, as Murdock explains in his blog, he will be stepping down from day-to-day management of Progeny. He will, however, continue to work with Progeny as an advisor.
He will also keep working with the DCC Alliance. "Indeed, my new role with the FSG is, in a lot of ways, a natural progression from that latest waypoint," said Murdock.
The unifying theme of the DCC Alliance has been to create a common LSBcertified version of Linux to serve as the basis for each of its members' particular distributions.
Looking ahead for the LSB, Murdock detailed his plans and thoughts about the Linux standard.
"In summary, the focus is on making the LSB more relevant to the ISV (independent software vendor) community. The first step is getting the right people around the table, from the distros and upstream projects alike, and putting together a solid roadmap that provides a stable, consistent API/ABI (application programming interface/application binary interface) layer to developers over time. ISVs want that kind of stability and consistency. They want to know their R&D investments are protected," said Murdock.
"We also need a standard that describes what's coming in the next versions of the major distros, not the ones that are already shipping, because when you're developing software, your window is 6, 9, 12 months down the road, not what's there today. To date, the LSB has lagged too far behind."
"Of course," Murdock continued," the LSB doesn't define the standard, it only documents it. That's why broadening participation across the distros and upstream projects is so critical here. We still want to document what others are doing; the main difference is we want to document it while they're doing it, not after they've done it."
"We'll be broadening the scope of the LSB too," he continued.
"There's simply too much left unspecified in the LSB today. Desktop will be a big focus here."
Specifically, Murdock said, "We're adding desktop libraries in the upcoming LSB 3.1, but it's just the toolkits. Again, we'll be following the lead of other projects."
"Freedesktop.org is doing some very promising work up the stack to standardize the things that have traditionally made targeting desktop Linux a nightmare, simple things like how you add an item to a menu that works across desktop environments.
There are a lot of holes at the lower levels too, like configuration and packaging, and we hope to work with the distros and the community to help address those areas too."
The Portland Project, which sprang from a meeting of Linux desktop architects sponsored by the OSDL's (Open Source Development Labs) Desktop Linux Working Group, is also working on addressing these issues.
"On a related note, we'll be making a big developer outreach push this year. We simply have to make it easier for developers to target the Linux platform in a way that's portable across different distros and desktop environments. It needs to be dead simple. I've talked to a lot of ISVs over the last several months, and the common theme is that the Linux environment can be terrifying at first glance, particularly to someone coming from the Windows or Microsoft platforms."
Murdock explained, "There's no MSDN (Microsoft Software Developers Network). The development tools aren't well integrated with the Linux APIs. Since the LSB is the standard for a lot of those APIs, the FSG is in an excellent position to fill the gap here, to add value, and you'll see some initiatives along these lines from us in the coming months."
It's an ambitious set of goals, but Murdock is eager to start trying to achieve them.
--Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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