Canonical Joins The Linux Foundation

Commercial sponsor of Ubuntu ® looks to support cross-industry collaboration and promotion to fuel Linux growth

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, on August 18, 2008, announced that Canonical, the power, so to speak, behind Ubuntu and its success, has become a member of the Foundation.

Canonical is the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, a popular version of the Linux operating system, and supports a wide range of other open source projects including Bazaar, Storm and Upstart. Ubuntu has become a popular choice for the server and desktop as well as for the rapidly emerging areas of netbooks and mobile Internet devices.

Matt Zimmerman is the CTO of the Ubuntu project in Canonical, chairs the Ubuntu Technical Board and leads all engineering efforts for the distribution.

“The Linux Foundation occupies a critical, non-commercial function in the use and popularization of Linux around the world. We've always seen the Linux Foundation's value and are pleased to now become an official member and support its activities. We look forward to working with them to continue the march of Linux in all areas of computing,” said Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu program manager and CTO, Canonical.

Ubuntu community members have been active participants in a variety of workgroups at the Foundation, including the Linux Standard Base, Desktop Architects and Driver Backporting groups. With Canonicals support, user interests for both commercial and community versions of Ubuntu will be represented.

“Canonical is an important new member for the Linux Foundation,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “Matt and his team have created an exciting distribution that has taken the world by storm. They have rallied the cause of cross-industry, cross-community collaboration for years. We are extremely pleased to work even more closely with Canonical as we push Linux to the next stage of growth.”

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms. For more information, please visit www.linux-foundation.org.

Source: Linux Foundation Press Center
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VMware Joins The Linux Foundation

VMware joins leading Linux consortium to address increasing adoption of virtualization and cloud computing with Linux

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, announced on August 6, 2008, that VMware has become a member of the Foundation. The company joins existing Linux Foundation members and technology leaders such as Adobe, AMD, Dell, Fujitsu, Google, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel, Motorola, NEC, Novell, Oracle and Red Hat, among others.

“A growing number of organizations run their Linux environments on VMware virtualization, and the Linux Foundation gives us a collaborative forum to effectively address the needs of our customers,” said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and solutions at VMware. “We are delighted to become a member of The Linux Foundation and look forward to making future contributions to the Linux community.”

According to research firm IDC, revenue for the virtual machine software market may increase by more than four times from 2006-2011 to reach $4.8 billion by 2011*. As adoption of Linux expands as a result of its natural position as a platform for next-generation computing in the cloud and in virtualized environments, companies such as VMware are looking to The Linux Foundation as the forum for collaboration.

VMware's participation in the Linux community includes the contribution of the Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), a paravirtualization interface as an open specification, and subsequent collaboration with the Linux kernel community and others in the development of a source-level paravirtualization interface (paravirt-ops) for the Linux kernel. In 2007, VMware announced the release of its Open Virtual Machine Tools, the open source implementation of VMware Tools, and the creation of the open-vm-tools project to enable community participation.

“Linux is a natural platform for virtualization and cloud computing. VMware is obviously a leader in that field and a leading ISV who has embraced the Linux platform,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “We're excited to have VMware as our newest member.”

VMware has led the industry for the last decade in the breadth of operating systems supported by VMware virtualization, including all major Linux operating systems. VMware will work with the Linux Foundation and its members to address the increasing number of Linux users who are working with High Performance Computing (HPC), managed desktops, Web 2.0 technologies, and Software as a Service (SaaS) in virtualized environments.

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms. For more information, please visit www.linux-foundation.org.

Source: Linux Foundation Press Center
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