Google and the Linux Foundation to fund Linux kernel developers

Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) have published an open source contributor survey report that focuses on the requirement for additional work on security in open source software, which includes the massively pervasive Linux operating system.

Google and the Linux Foundation have announced that they are prioritising funds to underwrite two full-time maintainers for Linux kernel security development, Gustavo Silva and Nathan Chancellor.

Silva and Chancellor’s exclusive focus is to maintain and improve kernel security and associated initiatives to ensure that the world’s most pervasive open source software project is sustainable for decades to come.

“At Google, security is always top of mind and we understand the critical role it plays to the sustainability of open source software,” said Dan Lorenc, staff software engineer, Google. “We’re honoured to support the efforts of both Gustavo Silva and Nathan Chancellor as they work to enhance the security of the Linux kernel,” he added.

Chancellor is a Linux maintainer and has been working on the Linux kernel for four-and-a-half years.

Two years ago, Chancellor started contributing to mainline Linux under the ClangBuiltLinux project, which is a collaborative effort to get the Linux kernel building with Clang and LLVM compiler tools.

“I hope that more and more people will start to use the LLVM compiler infrastructure project and contribute fixes to it and the kernel

– it will go a long way towards improving Linux security for everyone,” said Chancellor.