Linux Foundation — BrandWiki

Linux Foundation

Overview

The Linux Foundation

class	skin-invert
formation	2000
type	501(c)(6) organization
mapframe	yes
mapframe-coordinates	37.7902°N, -122.3997°W
purpose	Open-source software
headquarters	548 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94104, United States
predecessor	Open Source Development Labs Free Standards Group
employees

The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects.[2]

History

The Linux Foundation started as Open Source Development Labs in 2000 to standardize and promote the open-source operating system kernel Linux.[3] It merged with Free Standards Group in 2007. The foundation has since evolved to promote open-source projects beyond the Linux OS as a "foundation of foundations" that hosts a variety of projects spanning topics such as cloud, networking, blockchain, and hardware.[4] The foundation also hosts annual educational events among the Linux community, including the Linux Kernel Developers Summit and the Open Source Summit.[5]

membership	1,000+ corporate members‡R1R‡

Community stewardship

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

Conferences

The Linux Plumbers Conference has been held annually since 2008. It focuses on the Linux kernel and related tools and libraries, typically lasts 3 days, and was held in the USA primarily for USA-based developers in its early years,[45] but now is regularly held elsewhere in the world.

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 careers in Linux IT.[46]

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.[47]

Core Infrastructure Initiative

The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), is 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.[48] 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.[49]

Community Data License Agreement (CDLA)

Introduced in October 2017,[50] the Community Data License Agreement (CDLA) is a legal framework for sharing data.[51] 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 the management of Linux.com from its previous owners, SourceForge, Inc.[52]

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.[53]

Much like Linux itself, Linux.com plans to rely on the community to create and drive content and conversation.

Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH)

In 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Linux Foundation announced the LFPH,[54] a program dedicated to advancing and supporting the virus contact tracing work led by Google and Apple 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.[55]

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."[56] 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.[57] Allianz, Amazon, Microsoft, and S&P Global will be the initiative's founding members.[58]

LF Energy

LF Energy is an initiative launched by the Linux Foundation in 2018 to improve the power grid.[59][60]

Training and certification

The Linux Foundation Training Program features instructors and content from the leaders of the Linux developer and open-source communities.[61]

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.[62] 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.[63]

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.[64]

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.[69]

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.[70]

Open Compliance Program

The Linux Foundation's Open Compliance Program provides an array of programs for open-source software licensing compliance. The focus of this initiative is to educate and assist developers (and their companies) on licensing requirements, to make it easier to create new software. 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.[71]

Agentic AI Foundation

In December 2025, it was announced that the Linux Foundation will create the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) to host and ensure the open-source, interoperability of AI agents and having an organized product ecosystem. To establish the group, Anthropic is donating its Model Context Protocol (MCP), Block is donating Goose (an open source agent framework), and OpenAI is donating AGENTS.md (instructions that are added to code repositories instructing AI coding tools on how to act). Other organizations that are joining the foundation include: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bloomberg, Cloudflare, and Google.[72][73]

Sub-organizations

Linux Foundation Europe

The Linux Foundation established the Linux Foundation Europe, with its headquarter located in Brussels, on September 14, 2022, with the aim of promoting open source throughout Europe. Linux Foundation Europe will increase open collaborative activities for all European stakeholders, including citizens, the public sector, and the private sector. Among the first members of the Linux Foundation Europe are Ericsson, Accenture, Alliander, Avast, Bosch, BTP, esatus AG, NXP Semiconductors, RTE, SAP, SUSE S.A., TomTom, Bank of England, OpenForum Europe, OpenUK, and the Research Institutes of Sweden. The Linux Foundation Europe will make it possible for open collaborative projects to be housed on European soil.[80][81] The first initiative is the Open Wallet Foundation (OWF), which aims to create an interoperable engine for digital wallets that supports payment processing, identity verification, and storing verified credentials including employment, education, financial status, and entitlements was launched on 23 February 2023. The inaugural members are Accenture, Gen Digital, Futurewei Technologies, Visa Inc., American Express, Deutsche Telekom / T-Systems, esatus AG, Fynbos, Hopae, IAMX, IDnow, IndyKite, Intesi Group, Ping Identity, Digital Identification and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC), Digital Dollar Project, Digital Identity New Zealand (DINZ), Digital Identity and Data Sovereignty Association (DIDAS), DizmeID Foundation (DIZME), Hyperledger Foundation, Information Technologies and Telematics Institute / Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH/ITI), Johannes Kepler University Linz, ID2020, IDunion SCE, Mifos Initiative, MIT Connection Science, Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), OpenID Foundation, Open Identity Exchange (OIX), Secure Identity Alliance (SIA), University of Rovira i Virgili, and the Trust Over IP Foundation (ToIP).[82][83]

The Linux Foundation Europe started the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) initiative on May 31, 2023. The goal of RISE is to increase the availability of software for high-performance and power-efficient RISC-V processors running high-level operating systems for a range of market segments by bringing together a large number of hardware and software vendors. Red Hat, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia, MediaTek, Intel, and Google are among the initial members.[84]

Linux Foundation Europe organisation took over governance of open source Rust-based Servo browser engine project from Mozilla in 2020, then rebooted with Igalia in 2023.[85] Other projects include open source mobile cross platform framework, Open Mobile Hub as a middleware for cross platform mobile app interoperability across multiple mobile platforms launched in 2023.[86]

Linux Foundation India

During KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India in New Delhi, the Linux Foundation announced the opening of Linux Foundation India on 11 December 2024, which will work on subjects including blockchain, security, Edge/IoT, cloud native technologies, telecommunications, and domain-specific artificial intelligence.[87][88] In India, the need for open-source technology has increased by 42% in 2023 as a result of the Linux Foundation's partnership with the International Startup Foundation (ISF). They are also collaborating with the open source networking company OpenNets.[89][90] Through the LF Decentralized Trust, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITy) are utilizing Linux Foundation's projects to build the National Blockchain Framework and Digital Rupee.[91]