The Free Standards Group Board Attracts Industry Leaders From Fujitsu, Gesmer Updegrove, HP, LPI, and Novell

Market Wire, January, 2006

The Free Standards Group, a not-for-profit organization that develops and promotes open source software standards, today announced the results of its annual board of directors election. The five veterans elected to the board represent industry experts in such fields as open source software, computer hardware, open standards and industry consortia. The following individuals will begin serving their two-year terms immediately:

Corporate Class

Masahiro Date, Fujitsu

Masahiro Date is the General Manager of Fujitsu, one of the largest computing companies in the world. Mr. Date has been active in the Linux community for many years. Recently, Mr. Date has served as Secretary and as a Director of OSDL.

Steve Geary, HP

Steve Geary is responsible for overseeing HP's Open Source and Linux technical strategy as well as development of Open Source and Linux technologies and solutions. Steve is active in various capacities in Open Source. Mr. Geary is also responsible for HP's activity with the Linux Standard Base and Eclipse.

Non-Profit Class

Jim Lacey, Linux Professional Institute

Jim Lacey is President and CEO of Linux Professional Institute, the world's premier Linux certification organization. Prior to running LPI, he was CEO of Bradford Learning Incorporated and served as General Manager of Linuxcare University, a strategic line-of-business within the Linuxcare Corporation.

Individual Class

Markus Rex, Novell

Markus Rex serves as Chief Technology Officer of the Linux and Open Source Group at Novell. He is responsible for guiding the strategic direction of the technology platform and providing insight and guidance to the product development organization. Mr. Rex is a member of Novell's Worldwide Management Committee.

Andrew Updegrove, Gesmer Updegrove LLP

Andrew Updegrove is a partner at Gesmer Updegrove LLP, where he has advised more than 70 standards and open source consortia, in most cases since their inception. He is recognized internationally as an expert on the topics of standard setting, intellectual property policies and consortium formation, and also serves on the board of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

"The leaders named here represent some of the brightest minds in the world of Linux and open standards," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group. "Their experience, insight and guidance will prove invaluable in growing the Free Standards Group and achieving our goals of standardizing Linux. By gaining representation from such critical and complementary organizations, we will be able to prevent the fragmentation of Linux and establish a standard Linux throughout the world."

Without open and commonly supported standards, open source is not possible. The FSG's workgroups represent the most important standardization projects in open source. The LSB helps software vendors target the Linux platform in a cost effective, low risk manner. This is crucial for the on-going success for Linux as it simplifies the development and porting of applications by software vendors.

About the Free Standards Group

The Free Standards Group is an independent not-for-profit organization that develops and promotes open source standards. Key Free Standards Group projects include the Linux Standard Base (LSB), OpenI18N, OpenPrinting and the FSG Accessibility Workgroup. Supported by leaders in the IT industry as well as the open source development community, the Free Standards Group fulfills a critical need to establish and promote open standards uniquely designed for open source. More information on the Free Standards Group is available at www.freestandards.org.

Press Contact: Amanda McPherson 415-531-0483