Core Infrastructure Initiative Brings Support to Key Projects

In the wake of the Heartbleed OpenSSL crisis, a new Core Infrastructure Initiative backed by leading technology companies has been established to fund and support critical elements of the global information infrastructure.

The multi-million dollar Core Infrastructure Initiative, which is managed by The Linux Foundation, will provide assistance to open source projects  that are in the critical path for core computing and Internet functions.

The first project under consideration to receive funds from the Initiative will be OpenSSL, which could receive fellowship funding for key developers as well as other resources to assist the project in improving its security, enabling outside reviews, and improving responsiveness to patch requests.

Founding backers of the Initiative include Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Rackspace, VMware and The Linux Foundation.

“We are expanding the work we already do for the Linux kernel to other projects that may need support,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “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.”

"Maintaining the health of the community projects that produce software critical to the security and safety of Internet commerce is in everyone's interest," said Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia Law School, Founding Director of the Software Freedom Law Center. "The Linux Foundation, and the companies joining this Initiative, are enabling these dedicated programmers to continue maintaining and improving the free and open source software that makes the Net work safely for us all. This is business and community collaboration in the public interest, and we should all be grateful to The Linux Foundation for making it happen."

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/core-infrastructure-initiative