 | |
| Predecessor | |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2000 |
| Type | 501(c)(6) organization |
| Purpose | Build sustainable ecosystems around open source projects to accelerate technology development and commercial adoption. |
| Location | |
Membership
| 1,000+ corporate members |
Employees
| 150 |
| Website | www |
Jim Zemlin at the opening of the LinuxCon Europe 2014
Linus Torvalds at LinuxCon North America 2016
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. It also hosts and promotes the collaborative development of open source software projects.
It began 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 and lead maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman and is supported by members such as AT&T, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm, Samsung, and VMware, as well as developers from around the world.
In recent years, the Linux Foundation has expanded its services
through events, training and certification, and open source projects.
Projects hosted at the Linux Foundation include Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), Hyperledger, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Cloud Foundry Foundation, Xen Project, and many others.
History
The origins of The Linux Foundation can be traced to 1993 when Patrick D'Cruze started the Linux International email list then known as LI.
In 1993 at Comdex, Bob Young introduced Mark Bolzern
to the LI list and shortly thereafter Bolzern shared his vision and was
asked to "make it so" by the members of the list. Bolzern funded LI and
its activities until others eventually joined. The vision defined among
other things, an entity to deal with traditional public relations on
behalf of Linus Torvalds,
and to file for TradeMark on behalf of Linus among many other things
about to be described. Under Bolzern's direction, LI became a
collaboration of Linux related vendors and technologists, heading a
single direction that served everyone (the entire Linux movement)
according to the original vision. It became clear that Bolzern could not
continue to be both CEO of WorkGroup Solutions/LinuxMall AND executive
director of Linux International at the same time because of perceived
conflict of interest.
In mid 1994 Bolzern and Young recruited Jon "maddog" Hall
into the Executive Director position, who in turn filed the Corporate
paperwork on behalf of the new Board of Directors while Bolzern also
remained on the Board, as well as continued leading trade show and
marketing efforts until late 1999. This included many trips for Press
Relations and User Groups by Bolzern, or maddog. Bolzern also organized
and managed the launch of Linux Pavilions at major trade shows of the
time such as UniForum, Comdex, Usenix, and eventually with maddog
helping to establish the Atlanta Linux Showcase, then helped Larry Augustin(LI
Board Member) and the Silicon Valley Linux user group create the San
Francisco Linux Expo. Especially notable in the 94–98 timeframe was an anti-fraud Linux Trademark filing led by LI. Already included in the LI suite of projects by the mid 90s were the Linux Mark Institute,
Linux Base Standard, Certification Programs and the Trade Show &
Press relationships along with actually being a Vendor association. Here
is a page outlining Linux International's membership
as of the latter half of the 90s. The list is not presented as
alphabetical, but as agreed in order of merit to LI & Linux. Bolzern and maddog continued to provide the bulk of the funding until about
1998, augmented by vendor and individual membership fees.
As more and more individuals and sponsors joined the LI vision,
by 1999 LI had already become a vendor-neutral 501c6 Non-Profit Industry
Association for Linux with Linus Torvalds' blessing, while Linus
himself focused on development and technical excellence for Linux
itself. LI's primary purpose was to be that Industry Marketing
Organization that also supported Linux related Certification Programs,
along with development of essential Projects and Education. The vision
was huge, as large vendors began to come to the party and expected more
sophistication. Thus more help was needed even as Bolzern was being
distracted because his wife was diagnosed with cancer, and maddog was
becoming weary of the load. With everyone's support Augustin took action
and suggested another organization be formed to continue.
In 2000, OSDL was founded after appealing to the Linux
International Board of Directors for a number of the fundamental
projects that are still part of the Linux Foundation today. OSDL was a
non-profit organization supported by a global consortium that aimed to
"accelerate the deployment of Linux for enterprise computing" and "to be
the recognized center-of-gravity for the Linux industry." while Jon "maddog" Hall then went a different direction with LI.org.
In 2003, Linus Torvalds, the creator of the freely available
Linux kernel, announced he would join the organization as an OSDL Fellow
to work full-time on future versions of Linux.
In 2007, OSDL merged with the Free Standards Group, another organization promoting the adoption of Linux. At the time, Jim Zemlin, who headed FSG, took over as executive director of The Linux Foundation where he remains today.
On September 11, 2011, The Linux Foundation's website was taken
down due to a breach discovered 27 days prior, including but limited to
all attendant subdomains of The Linux Foundation, such as Linux.com. Major parts including OpenPrinting
were still offline on October 20, 2011. The restoration was complete on
January 4, 2012 (although one site, the Linux Developer Network, will
not be restored).
In March 2014, The Linux Foundation announced it would begin building a MOOC program with nonprofit education platform, edX.
The aim of this collaboration was to serve the rapidly growing demand
for Linux expertise in a vehicle that was available to "anyone, anywhere
in the world, at any time." At this point, their first offering was a
basic "Introduction to Linux" course, but the library has since expanded
to include Intro to Cloud Infrastructure Technologies, Intro to DevOps,
and Intro to OpenStack.
On November 16, 2016, The Linux Foundation Announced that
Microsoft, traditionally seen as a competitor, had joined the
organization as a Platinum member. The news was widely recognized as
further evidence of an industry-wide embrace of open source software. Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Group
explained that the company was "excited to join The Linux Foundation
and partner with the community to help developers capitalize on the
shift to intelligent cloud and mobile experiences."
The Linux Foundation has brought a number of notable changes in the open source industry in 2017. At the inaugural Open Source Summit
in Los Angeles, a collection of Open Source Guides for the Enterprise,
created in partnership with TODO Group and open source
managers/executives, were announced to provide further transparency to
new open source projects looking to solidify their stance, strategy, and
staying power.
The event was also a platform to announce the foundation's CHAOSS
Project (to build a platform for analyzing open source projects.) Despite a rivalry in the rideshare
market, Uber and Lyft displayed unity in announcing two new projects
under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) umbrella at Open
Source Summit.
On January 23, 2018, The Linux Foundation announced that six of its open source networking projects (ONAP, OPNFV, OpenDaylight, FD.io, PNDA, & SNAS) would be united under one umbrella project called the LF Networking Fund (LFN).
Arpit Joshipura, formerly the Director of Networking and Orchestration
at the foundation became the Executive Director of LFN, while Heather
Kirksey (formerly director of OPNFV,) became The Linux Foundation's VP
of NFV. Participation in LFN is voluntary for the networking projects
and is free to decide whether or not to join the fund. Each projects
continues to maintain its technical independence.
Goals
The Linux
Foundation is dedicated to building sustainable ecosystems around open
source projects to accelerate technology development and commercial
adoption. It is the home of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and lead
maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman, and provides a neutral home where Linux
kernel development can be protected and accelerated for years to come.
It also fosters innovation by hosting 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 Linux community by offering technical information and education through its annual events, such as Open Source Leadership Summit, Linux Kernel Developers Summit, and Open Source Summit (formerly known as LinuxCon, inaugurated in September 2009). 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 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 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.
Training and Certification
The
Linux Foundation Training Program features instructors and content
straight from the leaders of the Linux developer and open source
communities.
Participants receive Linux training that is vendor-neutral,
technically advanced, and created with the actual leaders of the Linux
development community themselves. The Linux Foundation Linux training
courses, both online and in-person (at events and corporate onsite,)
give attendees the broad, foundational knowledge and networking needed
to thrive in their careers.
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."
Patent Commons Project
The patent commons consists of all patented software which has been made available to the open source 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 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 patent commons reference library aggregating and documenting information about patent-related pledges and other legal solutions directed at the open-source software community. As of 2015 the project listed 53 patents.
Linux Foundation 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.
As of September 2015, 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.
For the rest of this article, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation#Linux_Foundation_Projects
