Establishment of Linux Foundation

Much of the membership of the two organizations that are now merging is the same. They also largely conducted the same activities. According to new president Jim Zenlin, it therefore makes sense to enter into a merger, reports news service CNet News.com.

There is a need, according to Zenlin, for a centralized question bank on Linux for busy IT managers.

The Linux Foundation will have approximately 45 employees. Like its predecessors, the new organization aims to provide direction for the further development of Linux and promote standardization of the open source operating system. In practice, the major suppliers of Linux distributions, Red Hat in the lead, now have the greatest influence on the development of Linux.

Open Source Developer Labs (OSDL), founded in 2000, employs Linux founder Linus Torvalds. The organization was founded in 2000 primarily to make Linux more suitable for servers at the upper end of the market. Later OSDL widened its acieradius, but last year acitvities were scaled back. In December, the workforce was downsized, with 9 of 35 employees having to leave. Among them was director Stuart Cohen.

The Free Standards Group manages the Linux Standard Base (LSB). This should standardize the interplay between operating system and applications so that applications can run unchanged on a wide range of Linux variants.