Linux Vendors Partner to Further Standards

Conectiva, Mandrakesoft, Progeny, and Turbolinux announced an agreement today to base products on a common implementation of LSB 2.0. The Linux Core Consortium (LCC) should have the framework (the common core) available in the first quarter of 2005. How does this differ from the now defunct (and never really active) UnitedLinux, which Conectiva and Turbolinux were both members of, you may ask? Mandrakesoft has addressed this very question for us:
Is this just another UnitedLinux attempt?
UnitedLinux was based on the premise of four geographically dispersed Linux companies developing a common enterprise product for customers and partners. However, UnitedLinux was a closed organization that relied on the engineering of a single company.
LCC builds on the notion that working together on a common core still makes sense, but not in a closed environment. LCC invites all Linux companies to join. Red Hat, Novell, Sun, and Asianux have already been invited. Also, LCC will be based on the LSB, which already enjoys wide support in the industry.
Interestingly, both Red Hat and Novell have shown support for the LCC, but have not chosen to join. Both were indeed invited to do so. Should be interesting to see how this plays out. I think the fact that it is based on the already accepted LSB means they already have a nice head start on acceptance. One encouraging goal they have is increasing interoperability between and Debian and RPM-based technologies and working toward a common binary core that can form the basis of both Debian and RPM-based distributions. The differences in packaging formats is the source of many incompatibilities between distros today. Getting the best features of both RPM and deb into a single compatible system would be fantastic.
–jeremy