Linux Foundation has announced Linux Standard Base 4.0 beta. LSB attempts to provide a consistent Linux platform for ISV’s. These are a number of changes. Following Red Hat’s efforts to consolidate on NSS, LSB has endorsed it as the cryptography solution as well as providing new distribution tests and tools for certification of third party applications.

This new version of LSB promises to accomplish these goals in a more powerful way. “We have a new set of LSB tools to make it much easier for ISVs to development applications that are LSB compliant, and to test to see how portable their applications are via the Linux Application Checker,” Ted T’so, Chief Platform Strategist and Fellow with the Linux Foundation, explained.

The choice of NSS is driven by the need for better backward compatibility, FIPS certification and reduced maintenance costs. Additionally, the new standard scripts are more portable and will help catch issues.