If ISVs want "exactly the same", they are free to install a chroot environment containing the binaries they certify against and to supply a kernel that they expect their customers to use. That's the approach I've had to take when bundling third-party binaries built by people who were under the illusion that "exactly the same" was a reasonable thing to ask for. Once I got things working in my chroot, and automated the construction of the chroot, I switched back to the kernel I wanted to use; the ISV and I haven't troubled one another since.
If the LSB only attempts to certify things that haven't forked, then it's a no-op. Well, that's not quite fair; I have found it useful to bootstrap a porting effort using lsb-rpm. But for it to be a software operating environment and not just a software porting environment, it needs to have a non-trivial scope, which means an investment by both ISVs and distros. As a strategy for defining and extending the scope of consensus preparatory to a release of a test suite, sharing binaries is fine. But as a strategy for making ISVs and their customers happy, I think it's a chimera. Cheers, - Michael
