The Linux Foundation has announced a new multi-million dollar initiative to fund “open source projects that are in the critical path for core computing and Internet functions.” The new Core Infrastructure Initiative is in response to the recent Heartbleed OpenSSL crisis and other similar security issues involving open source tools.
The idea is to get a large amount of corporate-level momentum behind maintaining, securing, and improving the important open source utilities that form the foundation for the Internet. The initiative will provide the Linux Foundation with the funding it needs to support other core open source projects in the same way it currently supports development of the Linux kernel.
According to Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, “Our global economy is built on top of many open source projects. Just as The Linux Foundation has funded Linus Torvalds to be able to focus 100% on Linux development, we will now be able to support additional developers and maintainers to work full-time supporting other essential open source projects. We are thankful for these industry leaders’ commitment to ensuring the continued growth and reliability of critical open source projects such as OpenSSL.”
Several big Internet vendors have already signed on to the project, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Dell, IBM, Rackspace, Microsoft, and VMware.