The Linux Foundation announced today that Canonical, Inc., commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, joined its fold to become the latest supporter of the expansion of Linux into the business sector. Recently, many big commercial software companies have joined the Linux Foundation including Adobe and VMware.
“Canonical is an important new member for the Linux Foundation,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “Matt [Matt Zimmerman - CTO of the Ubuntu project at Canonical] 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 purpose of the Linux Foundation and member sponsorship is to provide momentum to grow adoption and use of Linux by focusing in three main areas:
1. Sponsorship of key developers like Linus Torvalds and others so that they may concentrate their full-time efforts on improving Linux.
2. Offering standardization services for developers through the Linux Standards Base and the Linux Developer Network.
3. The Linux Foundation also offers a single point of contact for the Linux Community as spokesperson representation, legal representation, and developer collaboration.
The Linux Foundation does not create or promote any distribution nor does it compete in any way with any Linux vendor efforts or business.
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Canonical, Inc. provides commercial support for the Ubuntu Linux distribution and is committed to the development, distribution and promotion of open source software products, and to providing tool and support to the open source community. VMware is one of the world's leading virtualization software solution providers.