The Linux Standards Base (LSB) organisation tries to standardize the Linux distro's. LSB 4 could be the catalyst that enables independent software vendors to develop applications that will run on any LSB-compliant Linux distribution. For years the LSB has not quite lived up to its full potential.

"One of the reasons why I don't talk about the LSB as much anymore is I don't want to exceed expectations for what it can deliver," according to Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation.

"It is critically important for Linux to have an easy way for software developers to write to distro 'N,' whether it's Red Hat, Ubuntu or Novell," he said. The reason you need that is because we don't want what happened to Unix to happen to Linux in terms of fragmentation." as stated on the Internetnews.com site.

The LSB defines a core set of APIs & libraries, so developers can develop & port applications that will work on LSB-certified Linux distro's. The Linux Foundation last updated the LSB in February of this year with the 3.2 release. Zemlin himself has been a champion of the LSB since his days at the Free Standards Group, where the LSB was one of his primary missions.

According to Zemlin, the standard will take a big step forward with LSB 4.0.