Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) was a

non-profit organization 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 ...

supported by a consortium to promote

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, which i ...

for enterprise computing. Founded in 2000, OSDL positioned itself as an independent, non-profit lab for developers who are adding enterprise capabilities to Linux. The headquarters was first incorporated in San Francisco but later relocated to Beaverton in Oregon with second facility in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of ...

, Japan. On January 22, 2007, OSDL and the

Free Standards Group The Free Standards Group was an industry non-profit consortium chartered to primarily specify and drive the adoption of open source standards. It was founded on May 8, 2000. All standards developed by the Free Standards Group (FSG) were released u ...

merged to form the

Linux Foundation 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. Addi ...

, narrowing their respective focuses to that of promoting Linux.

Activities

OSDL sponsored projects, including industry initiatives to enhance Linux for use in corporate

data centre A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...

s, in telecommunications networks, and on

desktop computer A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply ...

s. It also: * provided hardware resources to the

free software community The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the s ...

and the open source community * tested and reported on open source software * employed a number of Linux developers. Its employees included

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 ...

, the first OSDL fellow, and

Bryce Harrington Bryce may refer to: People * Bryce (given name) * Bryce (surname) Places * Bryce Canyon National Park * Mount Bryce * Bryce, Utah * Bryce, Arizona Other * Bryce (software) * Bryce Hospital See also *Brice (disambiguation) Bricius most often refe ...

. In 2005, Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell was th
second OSDL fellow
for a year. It had data centers in Beaverton (Oregon, United States) and Yokohama (Japan). OSDL had investment backers that included: 7 funders of

Computer Associates CA Technologies, formerly known as CA, Inc. and Computer Associates International, Inc., is an American multinational corporation headquartered in New York City. It is primarily known for its business-to-business (B2B) software with a product p ...

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 ...

Hitachi, Ltd. () 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 ...

, Hewlett-Packard, IBM,

Intel Corporation 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 series ...

Nippon Electric Corporation 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 ...

, as well as a large collection of

independent software vendor An independent software vendor (ISV), also known as a software publisher, is an organization specializing in making and selling software, as opposed to computer hardware, designed for mass or niche markets. This is in contrast to in-house softw ...

s, end-user companies and educational institutions. A steering committee composed of representatives from the investment backers directed OSDL, which also had a significant staff of its own.

Working groups

OSDL had established five Working Groups since 2002: *

Mobile Linux Initiative Mobile may refer to: Places * Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city * Mobile County, Alabama * Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S. * Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Mobile ...

Carrier Grade Linux Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) is a set of specifications which detail standards of availability, scalability, manageability, and service response characteristics which must be met in order for Linux kernel-based operating system to be considered "ca ...

Data Center Linux In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...

Desktop Linux Besides the Linux distributions designed for general-purpose use on desktops and servers, distributions may be specialized for different purposes including computer architecture support, embedded systems, stability, security, localization to a spec ...

*User Advisory Council

References

{{Authority control Free and open-source software organizations Organizations disestablished in 2007 Defunct companies based in Oregon Linux Foundation Buildings and structures in Beaverton, Oregon Companies established in 2000 Laboratories in Oregon 2007 disestablishments in Oregon