BIRTH OF THE LINUX FOUNDATION

Open Source Development Labs was set up at the turn of the millennium to, among other things, get Linux into data centres and communication networks. They became Torvald’s (and his righthand man Andrew Morton’s) employer in 2003. Prior to this he was employed by Transmeta, who permitted him to continue kernel development alongside his other work. Five years previous, another consortium, the Free Standards Group had been set up. By 2007 its work was mostly driving people to switch to Linux, and the two groups merged to form the Linux Foundation (LF).

Today the LF’s Platinum members include Facebook, Microsoft, Tencent, IBM and Intel. All of whom, contribute (besides the half a million dollars required for Platinum status) a great deal of code to the Kernel. In 2012, when Microsoft wanted to get Linux working on its Azure cloud, they were for a time the biggest contributor. Besides funding the Kernel, the LF host hundreds of other open source projects, including Let’s Encrypt, the OpenJS Foundation and the Core Infrastructure Initiative, which aims to secure the software which underpins the internet.

But it’s not all code and corporations. There’s conferences too, and it’s thanks to the Linux Foundation that we’ve been able to provide interviews and coverage from the annual Open Source Summit. We look forward to conference season resuming, so we can get back to the snack bars and coffee counters.