“Linux Standard Base has not met its own stated goals with
LDPS 1.0, as ncurses incompatibilities demonstrate. Furthermore,
the inadequacy of the standard doesn’t seem influenced by the
distributors.“
“After three years of hibernation, LSB has finally produced a
deliverable. It is called the Linux Development Platform
Specification, or LDPS 1.0. According to the LDPS 1.0
documentation, “This specification is designed so that programs
developed on a conforming platform are expected to be portable to
all generally available Linux distributions as of October 7,
2000.”
“Does it meet that goal? Not at all. Although LDPS 1.0 falls
short in nearly every aspect, I can illustrate the problem through
one example: ncurses. The ncurses library provides programmers a
common way to write sophisticated character-mode applications. In
order to be LDPS 1.0 compliant, a distribution must include either
ncurses version 4.2 or ncurses version 5.0.”