The Free Standards Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and promoting open source software standards announced today the opening of a Linux certification lab in China. The lab will certify Linux distributions and applications to the Linux Standard Base and will be maintained by the FSG and the China Electronics Standardization Institute (CESI).

"LSB became an ISO/IEC international standard for Linux, and a necessary component of the Chinese national Linux standard, "said Mo Wei, executive director of CESI. "By working with FSG, CESI paved the way for communication and collaboration in global standardization."

The Linux Standard Base contains a set of APIs, libraries and interoperability standards. Applicants who receive the certification can apply for the Free Standards Group trademark and market LSB-compliant and interoperable products to their customers.

A well supported standard for Linux is the necessary component to Linux's continued success. Without a commonly adopted standard, Linux will fragment, thus proving costly for vendors to port their applications and making it difficult for end users and Linux vendors alike. With the LSB, all parties benefit as it becomes easier and less costly for software vendors to target Linux, resulting in more applications available for the Linux platform.

Leading companies like Red Hat, Novell, MandrakeSoft, Conectiva, IBM, Intel, HP, AMD, Dell, Sun Microsystems support the Free Standards Group, and recently, both ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission accepted the LSB as a Publicly Available Specification.