The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit that hosts open source software, hardware, standards and data projects, with training, events and a membership program.

Companies and developers who want to build shared technology together bring their projects to the Linux Foundation, a neutral, trusted hub for code and collaboration. The organization took its name in 2007, when the Open Source Development Labs merged with the Free Standards Group. The Labs had been founded in 2000 by a group of companies including IBM, HP and Intel. It is a 501(c)(6) non-profit and sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Projects that join receive what the foundation calls the Linux Foundation Method: a neutral home for code, ecosystem curation and community building. Support programs cover developer enablement, business operations, training and certification, marketing and events, and membership development. Hosted projects also get collaborative tooling, contributor and participation analytics and infrastructure management, and the LFX Platform offers LFX Tools and LFX Insights. LF Education runs courses on Linux, Kubernetes, cybersecurity, PyTorch and Rust, and LF Research publishes studies on open source. Its work spans open software, open hardware, open standards and open data. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, part of the Linux Foundation, provides support, oversight and direction for cloud native projects, Kubernetes among them, and runs KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. Podman, the daemonless container engine, joined the CNCF as a Sandbox project on 21 January 2025. OpenTofu, the infrastructure as code tool forked in 2023, followed into the CNCF Sandbox on 23 April 2025. The foundation is used by companies that join as corporate members to help shape the ecosystem or bring a project to be hosted, and by developers who contribute code, take courses and attend its events.