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The Linux Foundation (LF) is a
non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Additionally, it hosts and promotes the collaborative development of
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
software projects. It is a major force in promoting diversity and inclusion in both Linux and the wider open source software community. The foundation was launched in 2000, under the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and became the organization it is today when OSDL merged with the Free Standards Group (FSG). The Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator
Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also ...
and lead maintainer
Greg Kroah-Hartman Greg Kroah-Hartman (GKH) is a major Linux kernel developer. he is the Linux kernel maintainer for the branch, the staging subsystem, USB, driver core, debugfs, kref, kobject, and the sysfs kernel subsystems, Userspace I/O (with Hans J. Koch ...
. Furthermore, it is supported by members, such as
AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...
,
Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...
,
Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
,
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
,
Hitachi () is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Nissan ''zaibatsu'' and later DKB Group and Fuyo G ...
,
Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various sma ...
, IBM,
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...
,
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or end ...
,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
,
NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...
,
Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word ...
, Orange S.A.,
Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, ...
,
Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
,
Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the wo ...
, and
VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...
, as well as developers from around the world. In recent years, the Linux Foundation has expanded its support programs through events, training and certification, as well as open source projects. Projects hosted at the Linux Foundation include the
Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...
project, Kubernetes, Automotive Grade Linux, ONAP (Open Network Automation Platform), Hyperledger,
Cloud Native Computing Foundation The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is a Linux Foundation project that was founded in 2015 to help advance container technology and align the tech industry around its evolution. It was announced alongside Kubernetes 1.0, an open sourc ...
, Cloud Foundry Foundation, Xen project, and many others.


Goals

The Linux Foundation is dedicated to building sustainable ecosystems around open source projects to accelerate technology development and commercial adoption. The foundation currently sponsors the work of Linux creator
Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also ...
and lead maintainer
Greg Kroah-Hartman Greg Kroah-Hartman (GKH) is a major Linux kernel developer. he is the Linux kernel maintainer for the branch, the staging subsystem, USB, driver core, debugfs, kref, kobject, and the sysfs kernel subsystems, Userspace I/O (with Hans J. Koch ...
, and aims to provide a neutral home where Linux kernel development can be protected and accelerated. The foundation also hosts collaborative events among the Linux technical community, software developers, industry, and end users to solve pressing issues facing Linux and open source. The Linux Foundation supports the Free software movement by offering technical information and education through its annual events, such as Open Source Leadership Summit, Linux Kernel Developers Summit and
Open Source Summit Open Source Summit (formerly LinuxCon) is a name for a series of annual conventions organized each year since 2009 by the Linux Foundation. The first LinuxCon took place in North America. Linux Foundation started organizing similar events in Euro ...
. A developer travel fund is available.


Initiatives


Community Data License Agreement (CDLA)

Introduced in October 2017, the Community Data License Agreement (CDLA) is a legal framework for sharing data. There are two initial CDLA licenses: * The CDLA-Sharing license was designed to embody the principles of
copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...
in a data license. It puts terms in place to ensure that downstream recipients can use and modify that data, and are also required to share their changes to the data. * The CDLA-Permissive agreement is similar to permissive open source licenses in that the publisher of data allows anyone to use, modify and do what they want with the data with no obligations to share changes or modifications.


Linux.com

On March 3, 2009, the Linux Foundation announced that they would take over the management of Linux.com from its previous owners, SourceForge, Inc. The site was relaunched on May 13, 2009, shifting away from its previous incarnation as a news site to become a central source for Linux tutorials, information, software, documentation and answers across the server, desktop/netbook, mobile, and embedded areas. It also includes a directory of Linux software and hardware. Much like Linux itself, Linux.com plans to rely on the community to create and drive the content and conversation.


Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH)

In 2020 amidst the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, the Linux Foundation announced the LFPH, a program dedicated to advancing and supporting the virus contact tracing work led by
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
and
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
and their Bluetooth notification systems. The LFPH is focusing its efforts on public health applications, including the effort's first initiative: a notification app intended for governments wanting to launch their privacy-focused exposure notification networks. As of today, LFPH hosts two contact-tracing apps.


LF Climate Finance Foundation

In September 2020, The Linux Foundation announced the LF Climate Finance Foundation (LFCF), a new initiative "to encourage investment in AI-enhanced open source analytics to address climate change." LFCF plans to build a platform that will utilize open-source open data to help the financial investment, NGO, and academia sectors to help better model companies’ exposure to climate change.
Allianz Allianz ( , ) is a German multinational financial services company headquartered in Munich, Germany. Its core businesses are insurance and asset management. The company is one of the world's largest insurers and financial services groups. Th ...
, Amazon, Microsoft, and S&P Global will be the initiative's founding members.


LF Energy

LF Energy is an initiative launched by the Linux Foundation in 2018 to improve the
power grid An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...
.


Training and certification

The Linux Foundation Training Program features instructors and content from the leaders of the Linux developer and open source communities. Participants receive Linux training that is vendor-neutral and created with oversight from leaders of the Linux development community. The Linux Foundation's online and in-person training programs aim to deliver broad, foundational knowledge and networking opportunities. In March 2014, the Linux Foundation and edX partnered to offer a free massive open online class titled Introduction to Linux. This was the first in a series of ongoing free offerings from both organizations whose current catalogue of MOOCs include Intro to DevOps, Intro to Cloud Foundry and Cloud Native Software Architecture, Intro to Apache Hadoop, Intro to Cloud Infrastructure Technologies, and Intro to OpenStack. In December 2015, the Linux Foundation introduced a self-paced course designed to help prepare administrators for the OpenStack Foundation's Certified OpenStack Administrator exam. As part of a partnership with Microsoft, it was announced in December 2015 that the Linux on Azure certification would be awarded to individuals who pass both the Microsoft Exam 70-533 (Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions) and the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) exam. In early 2017, at the annual Open Source Leadership Summit, it was announced that the Linux Foundation would begin offering an Inclusive Speaker Orientation course in partnership with the National Center for Women & Information Technology. The free course is designed to give participants "practical skills to promote inclusivity in their presentations." In September 2020, the Linux Foundation released a free serverless computing training course with CNCF. It is taught by Alex Ellis, founder of OpenFaaS. Among many other organization with similar offerings, The Linux Foundation has reported a 40% increase in demand for their online courses in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting social-distancing measures.


Patent Commons Project

The ''patent commons'' consists of all
patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
ed
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...
which has been made available to the
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
community. For software to be considered to be in the commons the patent owner must guarantee that developers will not be sued for infringement, though there may be some restrictions on the use of the patented code. The concept was first given substance by
Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become a ...
in 2001 when it published its Patent Promise. The Patent Commons Project was launched on November 15, 2005, by the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL). The core of the project is an
online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" ...
patent commons reference
library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...
aggregating and documenting information about patent-related pledges and other legal solutions directed at the open-source software community. , the project listed 53 patents.


Projects

Linux Foundation Projects (originally "Collaborative Projects") are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. More than 500 companies and thousands of developers from around the world contribute to these open source software projects. , the total lines of source code present in Linux Foundation's Collaborative Projects are 115,013,302. The estimated, total amount of effort required to retrace the steps of collaborative development for these projects is 41,192.25 person years. In other words, it would take 1,356 developers 30 years to recreate the code bases. At that time, the total economic value of development costs of Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects was estimated at $5 billion. Through continued investment in open source projects and growth in the number of projects hosted, this number rose to $15.6 billion by September 2017. All Linux Foundation projects are covered by the Contributor Covenant code of conduct developed by
Coraline Ada Ehmke Coraline Ada Ehmke is an American software developer and open source advocate based in Chicago, Illinois. She began her career as a web developer in 1994 and has worked in a variety of industries, including engineering, consulting, education, ...
, which is intended to ensure a safe and harassment-free environment for minorities. Some of the projects include (alphabetical order):


ACRN

ACRN
is a flexible, lightweight reference hypervisor, built with real-time and safety-criticality in mind, optimized to streamline embedded development through an open source platform.


AllJoyn

AllJoyn AllJoyn is an open source software framework that allows devices to communicate with other devices around them. A simple example would be a motion sensor letting a light bulb know no one is in the room it is lighting, so it can shut itself off. ...
is an open source application framework for connected devices and services was formed under Allseen Alliance in 2013. The project is now sponsored as an independent Linux Foundation project by the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF).


Automotive Grade Linux

Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) is a collaborative open source project developing a Linux-based, open platform for the connected car that can serve as the ''de facto'' standard for the industry. Although initially focused on In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI), the AGL roadmap includes instrument cluster, heads up display, telematics and autonomous driving. The goals of AGL are to provide: * An automotive-focused core Linux operating system stack that meets common and shared requirements of the automotive ecosystem * A transparent, collaborative and open environment for Automotive OEMs, Tier One suppliers, and their semiconductor and software vendors to create in-vehicle software * A collective voice for working with other open source projects and developing new open source solutions * An embedded Linux distribution that enables rapid prototyping for developers new to Linux or teams with prior open source experience


AGL technology

On June 30, 2014, AGL announced their first release, which was based o
Tizen IVI
and was primarily for demo applications. AGL expanded the first reference platform with the Unified Code Base (UCB) distribution. The first UCB release, nicknamed Agile Albacore, was released in January 2016 and leverages software components from AGL, Tizen and
GENIVI Alliance GENIVI Alliance was rebranded as the Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance (COVESA) in October 2021 and operates under that name. COVESA is a non-profit automotive industry alliance that develops reference approaches for integrating operating systems ...
, now called COVESA (Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance). UCB 2.0, nicknamed Brilliant Blowfish, was made available in July 2016 and included new features like rear seat display, video playback, audio routing and application framework. UCB 3.0, or Charming Chinook was released in January 2017. AGL plans to support additional use cases such as instrument clusters and telematics systems.


Carrier Grade Linux

The "CGL" Workgroup's main purpose is to "interface with network equipment providers and carriers to gather requirements and produce specifications that Linux distribution vendors can implement." It also serves to use unimplemented requirements to foster development projects that will assist in the upstream integration of these requirements.


CD Foundation

The Continuous Delivery Foundation serves as the vendor-neutral home of many of the fastest-growing projects for continuous delivery, including Jenkins, Jenkins X, Spinnaker, and Tekton. It supports DevOps practitioners with an open model, training, industry guidelines, and a portability focus.


Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry is an open source, multi cloud application platform as a service (PaaS) governed by the Cloud Foundry Foundation, a 501(c)(6) organization. In January 2015, the Cloud Foundry Foundation was created as an independent not-for-profit Linux Foundation Project. The foundation exists to increase awareness and adoption of Cloud Foundry, grow the contributor community, and create a cohesive strategy across all member companies. The Foundation serves as a neutral party holding all Cloud Foundry
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
.


Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Founded in 2015, the
Cloud Native Computing Foundation The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is a Linux Foundation project that was founded in 2015 to help advance container technology and align the tech industry around its evolution. It was announced alongside Kubernetes 1.0, an open sourc ...
(CNCF) exists to help advance container technology and align the tech industry around its evolution. It was announced with Kubernetes 1.0, an open source container cluster manager, which was contributed to the foundation by
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
as a seed technology. Today, CNCF is backed by over 450 sponsors. Founding members include Google, CoreOS, Mesosphere, Red Hat, Twitter, Huawei, Intel,
Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...
, IBM, Docker, Univa, and
VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...
.


CHAOSS

The Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) project was announced at the 2017
Open Source Summit Open Source Summit (formerly LinuxCon) is a name for a series of annual conventions organized each year since 2009 by the Linux Foundation. The first LinuxCon took place in North America. Linux Foundation started organizing similar events in Euro ...
North America in Los Angeles. Overall, the project aims to provide transparency and health and security metrics for open-source projects.


Code Aurora Forum

Code Aurora Forum is a consortium of companies with projects serving the mobile wireless industry. Software projects it concerns itself with are e.g. Android for MSM, Femto Linux Project,
LLVM LLVM is a set of compiler and toolchain technologies that can be used to develop a front end for any programming language and a back end for any instruction set architecture. LLVM is designed around a language-independent intermediate repre ...
, MSM WLAN and Linux-MSM.


Core Embedded Linux Project

Started in 2003, the Core Embedded Linux Project aims to provide a vendor-neutral place to establish core embedded Linux technologies beyond those of the Linux Foundation's Projects. From the start, any Linux Foundation member company has been allowed to apply for membership in the Core Embedded Linux Project.


Core Infrastructure Initiative

The Core Infrastructure Initiative was announced on 25 April 2014 in the wake of Heartbleed to fund and support
free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
projects that are critical to the functioning of the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
.


Delta Lake

Delta Lake is an open-source storage layer that brings ACID transactions to Apache Spark and big data workloads.


DiaMon Workgroup

The DiaMon Workgroup works toward improving interoperability between open source tools and improve Linux-based tracing, profiling, logging, and monitoring features. According to the workgroup, DiaMon "aims to accelerate this development by making it easier to work together on common pieces."


DPDK

The Data Plane Development Kit consists of libraries to accelerate CPU architecture-running packet processing workloads. According to Intel, "DPDK can improve packet processing performance by up to ten times."


Dronecode

Started in 2014, Dronecode began as an open source, collaborative project to unite current and future open source drone initiatives under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. The goal is a common, shared open source stack for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Chris Anderson (CEO of
3D Robotics 3DR is an American company headquartered in Berkeley, California that makes enterprise drone software for construction, engineering, and mining firms, along with government agencies. Prior to 2016, the company designed and marketed commercial ...
& founder of DIY Drones) serves as the chairman of the board of directors. Lorenz Meier, creator of PX4, MAVLink, QGC, and Pixhawk serves as the community representative on the Board.


EdgeX Foundry

Founded in 2017, EdgeX Foundry acts as a vendor-neutral interoperability framework. It is hosted in a hardware and OS agnostic reference platform and seeks to enable an ecosystem of plug-and-play components, uniting the marketplace and accelerating IoT deployment. The project wants to enable collaborators to freely work on open and interoperable IoT solutions with existing and self-created connectivity standards.


ELISA

The ELISA (Enabling Linux In Safety Applications) project was started to make it easier for companies to build and certify Linux kernel-based safety-critical applications – systems whose failure could result in loss of human life, significant property damage or environmental damage. ELISA members are working together to define and maintain a common set of tools and processes that can help companies demonstrate that a Linux-based system meets the necessary safety requirements for certification. ELISA was launched in 2019 and builds upon work done by SIL2LinuxMP and
Real-Time Linux The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize Linux, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Additi ...
projects.


FD.io

The Fast Data Project-referred to as "Fido"- provides an IO services framework for the next wave of network and storage software. In the stack, FD.io is the universal data plane. "FD.io runs completely in the user space," said Ed Warnicke (consulting engineer with Cisco and chair of the FD.io technical steering committee).


FinOps Foundation

The FinOps Foundation supports practitioners of FinOps, a discipline that helps finance and IT operations teams to work together to manage public cloud spending collaboratively, to get the maximum value out of cloud investments in a way that aligns to organizational goals. FinOps principles, best practices and framework allow for more accountability and predictability to the highly variable, self-service, consumption based billing models of public cloud.


FOSSology

FOSSology is primarily a project dedicated to an open source license compliance software system and toolkit. Users are able to run license, copyright and export control scans from the command line. A database and web UI provide a compliance workflow.


FRRouting

FRRouting (FRR) is an IP routing protocol suite for Unix and Linux platforms. It incorporates protocol daemons for BGP, IS-IS, LDP, OSPF, PIM, and RIP.


GraphQL Foundation

On 7 November 2018, the GraphQL project was moved from Facebook to the newly established GraphQL Foundation, hosted by the non-profit Linux Foundation.


Hyperledger

The Hyperledger project is a global, open source effort based around advancing cross-industry blockchain technologies. In addition to being hosted by the Linux Foundation, it is backed by finance, banking, IoT, supply chain, manufacturing and technology leaders. The project is the foundation's fastest growing to date, boasting over 115 members since founding in 2016. In May 2016, co-founder of the
Apache Software Foundation The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the ...
,
Brian Behlendorf Brian Behlendorf (born March 30, 1973) is an American technologist, executive, computer programmer and leading figure in the open-source software movement. He was a primary developer of the Apache Web server, the most popular web server software ...
, joined the project as its executive director.


IO Visor

IO Visor is an open source project and community of developers that will enable a new way to innovate, develop and share IO and networking functions. It will advance IO and networking technologies to address new requirements presented by cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV).


IoTivity

IoTivity is an
OSS OSS or Oss may refer to: Places * Oss, a city and municipality in the Netherlands * Osh Airport, IATA code OSS People with the name * Oss (surname), a surname Arts and entertainment * ''O.S.S.'' (film), a 1946 World War II spy film about ...
framework enabling seamless device-to-device connectivity to aid the Internet of Things as it grows. While Allseen Alliance and Open Connectivity Foundation merged in October 2016, the IoT projects of each (AllJoyn and IoTivity, respectively) will continue operating under The Linux Foundation. The two projects will "collaborate to support future versions of the OCF specification with a single IoTivity implementation."


JanusGraph

JanusGraph aims to continue open source development of the TitanDB graph database. It is a fork TitanDB, "the distributed graph database that was originally released in 2012 to enable users to find connections among large data sets composed of billions of vertices and edges."


JS Foundation

JS Foundation existed from 2016 to 2019. It was created in 2016 when the Dojo Foundation merged with jQuery Foundation, which merged subsequently rebranded itself as JS Foundation and became a Linux Foundation project. In 2019, the JS Foundation merged with the Node.js Foundation to form the new
OpenJS Foundation The OpenJS Foundation is an organization that was founded in 2019 from a merger of JS Foundation and Node.js Foundation. OpenJS Promotes the JavaScript and web ecosystem by hosting projects and funds activities that benefit the ecosystem. The Open ...
with a stated mission to foster healthy growth of the JavaScript and web ecosystem as a whole.


Kinetic Open Storage Project

The Kinetic Open Storage Project is dedicated to creating an open source standard around Ethernet-enabled, key/value Kinetic devices for accessing their drives. By creating this standard, it expands the available ecosystem of software, hardware, and systems developers. The project is the result of an alliance including major hard drive manufacturers - Seagate,
Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...
and
Western Digital Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produ ...
- in addition to Cisco,
Cleversafe IBM Cloud Object Storage is a service offered by IBM for storing and accessing unstructured data. The object storage service can be deployed on-premise, as part of IBM Cloud Platform offerings, or in hybrid form. The offering can store any typ ...
, Dell, DigitalSense,
NetApp NetApp, Inc. is an American hybrid cloud data services and data management company headquartered in San Jose, California. It has ranked in the Fortune 500 from 2012–2021. Founded in 1992 with an IPO in 1995, NetApp offers cloud data service ...
, Open vStorage,
Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become a ...
and
Scality Scality is a company based in San Francisco, California that develops software-defined object storage. RING is the company's commercial product. Scality RING software deploys on industry-standard servers to store objects and files. Scality also ...
.


Linux Standard Base

The
Linux Standard Base The Linux Standard Base (LSB) was a joint project by several Linux distributions under the organizational structure of the Linux Foundation to standardize the software system structure, including the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard used in the Li ...
, or LSB, is a joint project by several
Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...
s under the organizational structure of the Linux Foundation to standardize the software system structure, or filesystem hierarchy, used with
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
. The LSB is based on the
POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming in ...
specification, the Single UNIX Specification, and several other open standards, but extends them in certain areas. According to the LSB: The LSB compliance may be certified for a product by a certification procedure. The LSB specifies for example: standard libraries, a number of commands and utilities that extend the POSIX standard, the layout of the file system hierarchy,
run level A runlevel is a mode of operation in the computer operating systems that implements Unix System V-style initialization. Conventionally, seven runlevels exist, numbered from zero to six. ''S'' is sometimes used as a synonym for one of the levels ...
s, the printing system, including spoolers such as
CUPS CUPS (formerly an acronym for Common UNIX Printing System) is a modular printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a host that can accept print job ...
and tools like
Foomatic Foomatic is a configurable printing filter. It uses PPD files as configuration to generate appropriate output for a given printer. It is spooler independent which means it can be used with Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), LPRng and others. I ...
and several extensions to the
X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...
.


Long Term Support Initiative

LTSI is a project created/supported by Hitachi,
LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest '' chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered ...
,
NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...
, Panasonic,
Qualcomm Atheros Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductor chips for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. Founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the U ...
,
Renesas Electronics is a Japanese semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, initially incorporated in 2002 as Renesas Technology, the consolidated entity of the semiconductor units of Hitachi and Mitsubishi excluding their dynamic random-access ...
, Samsung Electronics, Sony and Toshiba, hosted at The Linux Foundation. It aims to maintain a common Linux base for use in a variety of consumer electronics products.


MLflow

MLflow
is an open source platform to manage the ML lifecycle, including experimentation, reproducibility, deployment, and a central model registry.


Node.js Foundation

The Node.js Foundation existed from 2015 to 2019. In 2019, the Node.js Foundation merged with the JS Foundation to form the new
OpenJS Foundation The OpenJS Foundation is an organization that was founded in 2019 from a merger of JS Foundation and Node.js Foundation. OpenJS Promotes the JavaScript and web ecosystem by hosting projects and funds activities that benefit the ecosystem. The Open ...
. with a stated mission to foster healthy growth of the JavaScript and web ecosystem as a whole.


ODPi

ODPi (Open Data Platform initiative) hosts open source projects that accelerate the development and delivery of big data solutions. It aims to deliver well-defined open source and open data technologies that run across distributed devices. It promotes these technologies worldwide through certification programs and other forms of marketing.


ONOS

ONOS The ONOS (Open Network Operating System) project is an open source community hosted by The Linux Foundation. The goal of the project is to create a software-defined networking (SDN) operating system for communications service providers that is d ...
(Open Network Operating System) is an open source community with a mission of bringing the promise of software-defined networking (SDN) to communications service providers in order to make networks more agile for mobile and data center applications with better economics for both users and providers.


OpenAPI Initiative (OAI)

OAI is committed to standardizing how REST APIs are described. SmartBear Software has donated the ''Swagger Specification'' directly to the initiative. The new name for the specification is
OpenAPI Specification The OpenAPI Specification, previously known as the Swagger Specification, is a specification for a machine-readable interface definition language for describing, producing, consuming and visualizing RESTful web services. Previously part of the S ...
.


OpenBMC

The OpenBMC project is a collaborative open-source project whose goal is to produce an open source implementation of the Baseboard Management Controllers (BMC) Firmware Stack.


OpenChain

The OpenChain Project aims to define effective open source software compliance in software supply chains. A key output is a reference specification for "good" open source compliance, which has become the ISO/IEC 5230 standard. Another output is a simple self-certification scheme that companies can submit to test their conformance with the standard.


Open Container Initiative

In 2015, Docker & CoreOS launched the
Open Container Initiative The Open Container Initiative (OCI) is a Linux Foundation project, started in June 2015 by Docker, to design open standards for operating-system-level virtualization OS-level virtualization is an operating system (OS) paradigm in which the ker ...
in partnership with The Linux Foundation to create a set of industry standards in the open around container formats and runtime.


OpenDaylight

OpenDaylight is the leading open SDN platform, which aims to accelerate the adoption of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) in service provider, enterprise and research networks.


OpenJS Foundation

The OpenJS Foundation is made up of 29 open source JavaScript projects including Appium, Dojo, jQuery, and Node.js, and webpack. Founding members included Google, Microsoft, IBM, PayPal, GoDaddy, and Joyent. It was founded in 2019 from a merger of JS Foundation and Node.js Foundation. Its stated mission is to foster healthy growth of the JavaScript and web ecosystem by providing a neutral organization to host projects and collaboratively fund activities that benefit the ecosystem as a whole.


Open Mainframe Project

The Open Mainframe Project aims to drive harmony across the
mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
community and to developed shared tool sets and resources. The project also endeavors to heighten participation of academic institutions in educating mainframe Linux engineers and developers.


OpenMAMA

OpenMAMA (Open Middleware Agnostic Messaging API) is a lightweight vendor-neutral integration layer for systems built on top of a variety of
message-oriented middleware Message-oriented middleware (MOM) is software or hardware infrastructure supporting sending and receiving messages between distributed systems. MOM allows application modules to be distributed over heterogeneous platforms and reduces the comple ...
.


OpenMessaging

Announced in October 2017, the goal of OpenMessaging is to act as a vendor-neutral open standard for distributed messaging/stream. The project is supported by Alibaba, Verizon's
Oath Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon ', also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to g ...
business unit, and others.


OpenPrinting

The OpenPrinting workgroup is a website belonging to the Linux Foundation which provides documentation and software support for printing under Linux. Formed as LinuxPrinting.org, in 2006 it became part of the Free Standards Group. They developed a database that lists a wide variety of printers from various manufacturers. The database allows people to give a report on the support and quality of each printer, and they also give a report on the support given to Linux by each printer vendor. They have also created a
foomatic Foomatic is a configurable printing filter. It uses PPD files as configuration to generate appropriate output for a given printer. It is spooler independent which means it can be used with Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), LPRng and others. I ...
(formerly cupsomatic) script which plugs into the
Common Unix Printing System CUPS (formerly an acronym for Common UNIX Printing System) is a modular printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a host that can accept print job ...
(CUPS).


OpenSDS

OpenSDS is an open source
software defined storage Software-defined storage (SDS) is a marketing term for computer data storage software for policy-based provisioning and management of data storage independent of the underlying hardware. Software-defined storage typically includes a form of storag ...
controller. As journalist Swapnil Bhartiya explained for CIO, it was formed to create "an industry response to address software-defined storage integration challenges with the goal of driving enterprise adoption of open standards." It is supported by storage users/vendors, including Dell, Huawei, Fujitsu, HDS, Vodafone and Oregon State University.


Open vSwitch

Originally created at Nicira before moving to VMware (and eventually the Linux Foundation), OvS is an open source virtual switch supporting standard management interfaces and protocols.


ONAP

The Open Network Automation Platform is the result of OPEN-O and Open ECOMP projects merging in April 2017. The platform allows end users to design, manage, and automate services and virtual functions.


OPNFV

The Open Platform for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) "aims to be a carrier-grade, integrated platform that introduces new products and services to the industry more quickly." In 2016, the project began an internship program, created a working group and an "End User Advisory Group" (founded by users & the board)


Overture Maps Foundation

In mid-December 2022, the foundation announced the launch of a new mapping collaboration, th
Overture Maps Foundation.
Its stated mission is "powering current and next-generation map products by creating reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data." Overture founding members were
Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...
(AWS),
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or end ...
,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
and
TomTom TomTom N.V. is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, TomTom released its first generation of satellite navigation devices to market in 2004 ...
. Overture is to be complementary to the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap (OSM) project and the foundation encourages members to contribute data directly to OSM.


PNDA

PNDA (Platform for Network Data Analytics) is a platform for scalable network analytics, rounding up data from "multiple sources on a network and works with Apache Spark to crunch the numbers in order to find useful patterns in the data more effectively."


R Consortium

The R Consortium is dedicated to expanding the use of R language and developing it further. R Consortium works with the R Foundation and other organizations working to broaden the reach of the language. The consortium is supported by a collection of tech industry heavyweights including Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google, and Esri.


Real-Time Linux

Real-Time Linux has an overall goal of encouraging widespread adoption of Real Time. It was formed to coordinate efforts to mainline
PREEMPT_RT Preempt (also spelled "pre-empt") is a bid in contract bridge whose primary objectives are (1) to thwart opponents' ability to bid to their best contract, with some safety, and (2) to fully describe one's hand to one's partner in a single bid. ...
and assist maintainers in "continuing development work, long-term support and future research of RT." Before 2004 there were research projects but no serious attempt at merging with mainline kernel. In 2004 Ingo Molnar start work on a patchset joined by Thomas Gleixner, who was working with Douglas Niehaus, and Steven Rostedt along with others. The patchset has seen rewriting and configuration has been merged into mainline kernel. Project is aimed at deterministic
RTOS A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which ...
with work involving threaded interrupts and priority inheritance. There is a wide range of requirements and use cases for RTOS and while project aims at large amounts of them it is not aiming for the most narrow and specialized range of cases. Unrelated work is done by FSMLabs for
RTLinux RTLinux is a hard realtime real-time operating system (RTOS) microkernel that runs the entire Linux operating system as a fully preemptive process. The hard real-time property makes it possible to control robots, data acquisition systems, ma ...
.


RethinkDB

After RethinkDB announced its shutdown as a business, the Linux Foundation announced that it had purchased the intellectual property under its Cloud Native Computing Foundation project, which was then relicensed under the Apache License (ASLv2). RethinkDB describes itself as "the first open-source, scalable JSON database built from the ground up for the realtime web."


RISC-V International

The RISC-V International association is chartered to standardize and promote the open RISC-V instruction set architecture together with its hardware and software ecosystem for use in all computing devices.


seL4

seL4 L4 is a family of second-generation microkernels, used to implement a variety of types of operating systems (OS), though mostly for Unix-like, ''Portable Operating System Interface'' (POSIX) compliant types. L4, like its predecessor microkernel ...
is the only microkernel in existence which has been developed using
formal verification In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal met ...
techniques. It belongs to the L4 microkernel family and was, like the other L4 microkernels, designed to attain great security and performance.


Servo

Servo is a browser engine developed to take advantage of the memory safety properties and concurrency features of the Rust programming language. It was originally developed by Mozilla and later donated to the Linux Foundation.


SNAS.io

Streaming Network Analytics System (project SNAS.io) is an open source framework to collect and track millions of routers, peers, prefixes (routing objects) in real time. SNAS.io is a Linux Foundation Project announced in May 2017.


SPDX

The Software Package Data eXchange (SPDX) project was started in 2010, to create a standard format for communicating the components, licenses and copyrights associated with software packages. As part of the project, there is a team that curates the SPDX License List, which defines a list of identifiers for commonly found licenses and exceptions used for open source and other collaborative software.


Tizen

Tizen is a free and open-source, standards-based software platform supported by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and silicon suppliers for multiple device categories such as smartphones, tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment devices, and smart TVs.


TODO

TODO (Talk Openly, Develop Openly) is an open source collective housed under the Linux Foundation. It helps companies interested in open source collaborate better and more efficiently. TODO aims to reach companies and organizations that want to turn out the best open source projects and programs. "The TODO Group reaches across industries to collaborate with open source technical and business leaders to share best practices, tools and programs for building dependable, effective projects for the long term," said Jim Zemlin at Collaboration Summit 2016.


Xen Project

The Xen Project team is a global open source community that develops the Xen Hypervisor, contributes to the Linux PVOPS framework, the Xen® Cloud Platform, and Xen® ARM.


Yocto Project

The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products regardless of the hardware architecture. It was founded in 2010 as a collaboration among many hardware manufacturers, open-source operating systems vendors, and electronics companies to bring some order to the chaos of embedded Linux development.


Zephyr Project

Zephyr is a small real-time operating system for connected, resource-constrained devices supporting multiple architectures. It is developed as an open source collaboration project and released under the Apache License 2.0. Zephyr became a project of the Linux Foundation in February 2016.


Community stewardship

For the Linux kernel community, the Linux Foundation hosts its IT infrastructure and organizes conferences such as the Linux Kernel Summit and Linux Plumbers Conference. It also hosts a Technical Advisory Board made up of Linux kernel developers. One of these developers is appointed to sit on the Linux Foundation board.


Goodwill partnership

In January 2016, the Linux Foundation announced a partnership with Goodwill Central Texas to help hundreds of disadvantaged individuals from underserved communities and a variety of backgrounds get the training they need to start new and lucrative careers in Linux IT.


Community Developer Travel Fund

To fund deserving developers to accelerate technical problem solving and collaboration in the open source community, the Linux Foundation launched the Community Developer Travel Fund. Sponsorships are open to elite community developers with a proven track record of open source development achievement who cannot get funding to attend technical events from employers.


Community Specification

In July 2020, the Linux Foundation announced an initiative allowing open source communities to create Open Standards using tools and methods inspired by open source developers.


Core Infrastructure Initiative

The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), a project managed by the Linux Foundation that enables technology companies, industry stakeholders and esteemed developers to collaboratively identify and fund critical open source projects in need of assistance. In June 2015, the organization announced financial support of nearly $500,000 for three new projects to better support critical security elements of the global information infrastructure. In May 2016, CII launched its Best Practice Badge program to raise awareness of development processes and project governance steps that will help projects have better security outcomes. In May 2017, CII issued its 100th badge to a passing project.


Open Compliance Program

The Linux Foundation's Open Compliance Program provides an array of programs for open source software compliance. The focus in this initiative is to educate and assist developers (and their companies) on license requirements in order to build programs without friction. The program consists primarily of self-administered training modules, but it is also meant to include automated tools to help programmatically identify license compliance issues.


Members

As of June 2022, there are over 1000 members who identify with the ideals and mission of the Linux Foundation and its projects.


Corporate members


Affiliates

* Blockchain at Columbia * Clemson University *
Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...
* Fondazione Inuit *
ISA Isa or ISA may refer to: Places * Isa, Amur Oblast, Russia * Isa, Kagoshima, Japan * Isa, Nigeria * Isa District, Kagoshima, former district in Japan * Isa Town, middle class town located in Bahrain * Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia * Mount ...
* Konkuk University * NXT * Seneca College * Trace Research and Development Center at
University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of ...
* Turbot *
University of Rome Tor Vergata Tor Vergata University of Rome, also known as the University of Rome II ( it, Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata"), is a public research university located in Rome, Italy. Located in the southeastern suburb of Rome, the university combine ...
*
University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
*
Zhejiang University Zhejiang University, abbreviated as ZJU or Zheda and formerly romanized as Chekiang University, is a National university, national public university, public research university based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is a member of the prestigiou ...


Funding

Funding for the Linux Foundation comes primarily from its Platinum Members, who pay US$500,000 per year according to Schedule A in LF's bylaws, adding up to US$4 million. The Gold Members contribute a combined total of US$1.6 million, and smaller members less again. As of April 2014, the foundation collected annual fees worth at least US$6,245,000.


Use of donations

Before early 2018, the Linux Foundation's website stated that it "uses onationsin part to help fund the infrastructure and fellows (like Linus Torvalds) who help develop the Linux kernel."


Events

The Linux Foundation events are where the creators, maintainers, and practitioners of the most important open source projects meet. Linux Foundation events in 2017, for example, were expected to attract nearly 25,000 developers, maintainers, system administrators, thought leaders, business executives and other industry professionals from more than 4,000 organizations across 85 countries. Many open source projects also co-locate their events at the Linux Foundation events to take advantage of the cross-community collaboration with projects in the same industry. 2017 events covered various trends in open source, including big data, cloud native, containers, IoT, networking, security, and more. Linux Foundation events are covered by a comprehensive code of conduct prohibiting inappropriate behavior, including harassment and offensive language. This applies at all times, either before, during or after the event, not only in person but also on social media and any other form of electronic communication. Persons witnessing such behavior are encouraged to report it to conference staff immediately and offenders may face penalties up to and including a lifetime ban from all future events. Additionally, to further improve diversity at events, all-male panels or speaker line-ups are specifically disallowed. Due to the
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quick ...
pandemic, the Linux Foundation has transitioned their events to a digital model until the virus has been successfully managed. The Foundation's largest event, Open Source Summit, was held remotely from June 29 to July 2, 2020 — it had originally been planned to take place in
Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
.


References


External links

* {{FLOSS