VMware Upgrades Linux Foundation Membership to Platinum

PRAGUE – OPEN SOURCE SUMMIT EUROPE – OCTOBER 25, 2017 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, announces VMware is underscoring its commitment to open source by becoming a Platinum member. VMware, a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, had been a member of the foundation at the Gold level.

The move signals VMware’s deepening involvement in open source and commitment to sustaining the communities behind critical projects. The company’s open source contributions stretch back years and include support for The Linux Foundation projects like Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), Cloud Foundry, Open Container Initiative, Open vSwitch, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), EdgeX Foundry and IO Visor, as well as projects such as OpenStack.

Dirk Hohndel, vice president and chief open source officer, VMware, already serves as a member of The Linux Foundation Board of Directors elected by Gold members. He will stay on the Board, filling VMware’s new Platinum seat, and an election will be held to fill the Gold representative seat.

“VMware is an active and committed contributor to the open source community, as shown by its extensive involvement with numerous projects and donations of its own code,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation. “Upgrading to the highest level of Linux Foundation membership accentuates the importance of open source to VMware. The community will benefit from increased opportunities to collaborate with the company, particularly in important fields like cloud computing.”

“The Linux Foundation is the premier organization where companies and individuals come together to collaborate and support open source–from the Linux kernel to cloud-native applications to network function virtualization for service providers,” said Dirk Hohndel, vice president and chief open source officer, VMware. “VMware actively participates in and contributes to all of these areas, so upgrading our sponsorship of The Linux Foundation to the highest tier is a logical extension of our ongoing work in these projects.”

More than 800 organizations are members of The Linux Foundation and the open source projects it hosts. AT&T, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm and Samsung are also Platinum members. To learn more about Linux Foundation membership or to join the organization, visit https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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