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Sunday afternoon, the Free Standards Group (FSG) signed an agreement to combine forces with Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) to form a new organization – The Linux Foundation. The result of this consolidation will be to dedicate the resources of the combined membership to "accelerate the growth of Linux by providing a comprehensive set of services to compete effectively with closed platforms."
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Jim Zemlin, currently the head of FSG, will lead the new organization as its Executive Director. The new organization will continue to support Linux in a variety of ways, including by providing economic support to Linus Torvalds and other key kernel developers, managing the Linux trademark, and providing legal protection to developers through such initiatives as the Open Source as Prior Art project, the Patent Commons, and the Linux Legal Defense Fund. It will also continue FSG's standardization efforts by maintaining the Linux Standard Base (LSB) and the Linux Developer Network (all major Linux distributions comply with the LSB today). Finally, it will "respond with authority" to disinformation and other attacks, and foster innovation by hosting collaboration in areas such as desktop interfaces, accessibility, printing, and application packaging, among many others. All in all, a tall order, but eminently possible given its membership: The Linux Foundation's founding members will include every major company in the Linux industry, including Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel, NEC, Novell, Oracle and Red Hat, as well as many community groups, universities and industry end users.
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