NAPA, Calif: The Linux Foundation and the Openinfra Foundation made it official at the Linux Foundation Member Summit; the top two corporate open source foundations are merging.
This strategic alliance, approved unanimously by both organizations’ boards, marks a new era of open source collaboration.
Openinfra, known for projects like OpenStack, Kata Containers, and StarlingX, has been at the forefront of developing and promoting open infrastructure globally. With a community spanning over 110,000 individuals across 187 countries, OpenInfra has been instrumental in advancing technologies such as cloud computing, edge computing, and AI infrastructure.
The Linux Foundation, established in 2000, is a leading non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Linux and other open source projects. It hosts many initiatives, including the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Hyperledger, the Open Network Operating System (ONOS), and, frankly, more open source projects than I can remember, and I cover them for a living!
By joining forces, both foundations aim to leverage their combined resources and expertise to address the evolving needs of modern infrastructure driven by AI, accelerated computing, and digital sovereignty. The partnership will enhance OpenInfra’s access to the Linux Foundation’s mature frameworks for legal support, security expertise, and global advocacy, allowing it to navigate regulatory and geopolitical complexities.
Peanut Butter and Chocolate
Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation’s Executive Director, put it best in his keynote, “Openinfra and our cloud projects are kind of like peanut butter and chocolate.” He added, “The team at the Openinfra are pretty rarefied folks who have managed a huge consortium of developers and enterprises that come together and collaborate on really definitional software. There are not a lot of people who have those skills and can do them at that scale.”
Executive Director of OpenInfra Jonathan Bryce highlighted the strategic benefits of this alliance, stating that it will accelerate data center modernization and empower innovators worldwide to contribute to and build upon shared technologies.
Bryce said, “We have an extremely global and huge community, over 100,000 individuals that participate in our projects across almost every country in the world. One of the things that I think is awesome is that we have 450 members of Openinfra who are not yet members of LF. We’re expanding our overall reach, and we’re going to be able to take open source more places. And that’s what I want to hit on today a little bit: the potential that I see for open source, especially infrastructure.”
The two aren’t just partnering just on old-school infrastructure, though. As Mark Collier, OpenInfra’s COO, said in an earlier interview with TFiR. “New infrastructure is being designed specifically for AI. GPU support has been part of OpenStack for years, making it the de facto standard in HPC — and AI is simply the next evolution of that. The latest [OpenStack] release introduced features like live migration for GPU workloads, and users like the Dawn Supercomputer in the UK are already building AI clouds on OpenStack.”
Following the integration, the OpenInfra Foundation will operate as a directed fund within the Linux Foundation, similar to the CNCF and the PyTorch Foundation. This structure ensures that OpenInfra projects will continue to be governed by their existing technical processes, while the OpenInfra Governing Board will oversee budget and project lifecycle management.
This partnership will accelerate innovation in the almost half-a-trillion-dollar data center infrastructure market. By combining resources, both foundations aim to drive the adoption of open source solutions, ensuring they remain at the forefront of technological advancements.
As the integration progresses, the collaboration between OpenInfra and Linux Foundation projects, such as Linux, OpenStack, and Kubernetes, is poised to create unprecedented opportunities for users and developers, reinforcing the position of open-source technologies in the face of evolving infrastructure requirements.
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