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The not-for-profit Free Standards Group (FSG) announced last week that it plans to strengthen its activities in Asia in an effort to prevent fragmentation of the Linux 
operating system.
The FSG develops and promotes open source 
software standards including the Linux Standard Base, and Openi18N, the internationalization standard for Linux.
The group plans to boost its efforts in Asia by standardizing the handling of Asian characters and establishing the Chinese Linux certification laboratory with the Chinese government.
Preventing Fragmentation
IT vendors including Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) , IBM (NYSE: IBM) , Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) have joined the FSG as sponsors. The firms will work to solve issues with Linux in Asia as well as offer their perspective on platform issues relating to Linux to the FSG.
Masahiro Date, general manager, partner alliances, Fujitsu, was elected to the FSG board of directors last December.
FSG Executive Director Jim Zemlin first announced the FSG's Asia plans in a keynote at LinuxWorld Tokyo earlier this month, where he discussed the role of Linux in the Asian market and the necessity for leading hardware and software vendors to unite to prevent the fragmentation of Linux.
Cooperation Key
"We look forward to working closely with [FSG partner firms] and representing their interests in our Linux open standards projects," said Zemlin.
"We believe the Free Standards Group and the Linux Standard Base are very important to growing the Linux market," said Masatoshi Yoshida, general manager of the Linux software development division at Fujitsu. "The Linux Standard Base will make it easier and more stable for ISVs to support Linux and their customers. FSG is the key organization in that space and we are happy to join FSG and lend our support to FSG."
The Free Standards Group develops and promotes open source standards with projects such as the Linux Standard Base, Openi18N, OpenPrinting and the FSG Accessibility Workgroup.
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