Microsoft has joined the Linux Foundation. Yesterday at Microsoft Connect, the company’s annual developer event, Microsoft announced that it will join the Linux Foundation as a platinum member. The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit organisation that seeks to advance professional open source management for mass collaboration. With this development John Gossman, from the Microsoft Azure team will join the Board of Directors of the Linux Foundation.
For some time now, Microsoft has been a major contributor to open source development. It has incorporated Canonical’s Ubuntu into Windows 10, brought SQL Servers to Linux, open sourced both the .NET Core 1.0 and Xamarin's software development kit. It has partnered with Red Hat, SUSE and others to support their solutions for Microsoft's products. Microsoft has also contributed to several projects managed by the Linux Foundation, such as Node.js, the Open API Initiative, the Open Container Initiative and OpenDaylight.
"As a cloud platform company we aim to help developers achieve more using the platforms and languages they know…..The Linux Foundation is home not only to Linux, but many of the community’s most innovative open source projects. We are excited to join The Linux Foundation and partner with the community to help developers capitalize on the shift to intelligent cloud and mobile experiences,” said Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Group.
Speaking about the development Jim Zemlin Executive Director, the Linux Foundation stated, “Microsoft has grown and matured in its use of and contributions to open source technology.”
Further, “The company has become an enthusiastic supporter of Linux and of open source and a very active member of many important projects. Membership is an important step for Microsoft, but also for the open source community at large, which stands to benefit from the company’s expanding range of contributions,” he added.