New Mobile Native Foundation to Foster Development Collaboration

Linux Foundation hosts effort to improve processes and technologies for large-scale mobile Android and iOS applications; Lyft makes initial contributions

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 2, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the Mobile Native Foundation (MNF). The MNF will bring developers together to improve processes and technologies that support large-scale Android and iOS applications. Organizations contributing to this effort include Airbnb, Capital One, Corellium, Elotl, Flare.build, GitHub, GogoApps, Haystack, Line, LinkedIn, Lyft, Microsoft, Peloton, Robinhood, Sauce Labs, Screenplay.dev, Slack, Solid Software, Spotify, Square and Uber.

“Like many of our industry peers, Lyft discovered that platform vendors did not solve all of the problems we faced as our mobile team grew from a dozen engineers to hundreds of active contributors,” said Keith Smiley, Staff Engineer, Lyft. “The Mobile Native Foundation will foster a diverse community that encourages collaboration and builds libraries and tools to move the industry forward.”

The MNF is a forum for collaboration on open source software, standards and best practices that can result in common UI frameworks, architectural patterns, build systems and networking stacks that can accelerate time to market and reduce duplicative work across companies.

“The mobile developer community is innovating and we know that open source and collaboration can ensure that continues,” said Mike Dolan, executive vice president and GM of Projects at the Linux Foundation. “The MNF will accelerate and smooth mobile app development and brings new contributions to the Linux Foundation ecosystem.”

Lyft is making early project contributions to the MNF that includes Kronos, index-import and set-simulator-location. Matthew Edwards is also contributing Flank.

For more information and to begin contributing, please visit: https://mobilenativefoundation.org

Partner Statements

Elotl

“We are excited to pioneer the state of art Kubernetes stack to build, test, and run modern mobile applications at cloud scale. We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with industry leaders on this vision! “said Madhuri Yechuri, Founder & CEO, Elotl.

Flare.build

“We look forward to collaborating with the community on many projects related to our core vision of decreasing friction and boosting productivity for teams creating applications at scale,” said Zach Gray, co-founder and CEO, Flare.build.

LinkedIn

“The Mobile Native Foundation will advance the state-of-the-art in mobile development by bringing together open source developers and leading tech companies in a place where we can collaborate and enable anyone to build and operate large scale mobile applications. We are excited to be part of the launch and look forward to what we can accomplish together,” said Oscar Bonilla, Engineer, LinkedIn.

Microsoft

“We see this as a great opportunity to more inclusively collaborate on challenges we face across the industry and we can’t wait to see the improvements to mobile development we can make when we all work together,” said Mike Borysenko, distinguished engineer, Microsoft.

Robinhood

“Robinhood’s award-winning mobile apps wouldn’t be possible without the open source tools we rely on and contribute back to. We look forward to working together with the open source community as we continue to scale and address shared technical challenges,” said Lee Byron, Engineering Manager, Robinhood.

Screenplay.dev

“We could not be more humbled or more excited to have the opportunity to work with industry leaders to push the state of mobile development forward,” said Tomas Reimers, Co-founder, Screenplay.

Slack

Slack’s mobile engineering has benefited tremendously from the open source community. We’re excited to see the energy and experience behind MNF and look forward to participating in shaping the future of mobile development at scale,” said Valera Zakharov, Tech Lead of the Mobile Developer Experience Team.

Spotify

“We are excited to join forces with the community in the mission of solving issues and providing better technologies to ship mobile apps at scale,” said Patrick Balestra, iOS Infrastructure Engineer, Spotify.

Uber

“Uber mobile apps have scaled with the help of a thriving open source community and we are now proud to collaborate with other organizations on the Mobile Native Foundation to further give back,” said Ty Smith, Android Tech Lead, Uber.

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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