A Conversation with The Open Group’s Graham Bird

Chuck Talk writes “I was fortunate enough today to have a conversation with Graham Bird, Vice president of Marketing for The Open Group about a number of important subjects. What follows is a record of that conversation, though slightly edited for readability and my ability to decipher my own unique style of shorthand.😉

Chuck Talk: Hi Graham, I was wondering if you might give my audience some insight into the role of The Open Group in establishing the Single UNIX Specification, LSB certification and other common published standards?

Graham Bird: Sure, Chuck, establishing the Single UNIX Specification is but one of many roles for The Open Group. There are a group of about 1000 people (known as the Austin Group) who contribute to The Open Group to help develop the specification. Certification of products is one of the services we perform. Our main goal is to enable Boundaryless Information Flow through interoperability with guaranteed reliability.

We achieve that through a number of methods, all designed around open standards. The latest version of the Single UNIX Specification is jointly owned and developed by The Open Group, IEEE and ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee, altogether forming the committee known as the Austin Group . The work of the Austin Group has led to the Single UNIX Specification Version 3 (UNIX 03), with a goal of “write once, adopt everywhere” for UNIX.”