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Storage, chip slingers pledge allegiance to Linux, open source

Linux Foundation swells ranks, coffers

LinuxCon 2014 As LinuxCon 2014 kicks off this week in Chicago, the Linux Foundation has announced that it has won new support from across the technology industry, including several hardware companies.

The nonprofit organization said on Wednesday that SanDisk, Seagate, and Western Digital have become Linux Foundation members, all three of which are interested in using Linux and open-source software to power storage systems.

"Our new storage members are embracing a more software-centric approach to storage and also value openness as a way to generate rapid storage, flash and disk drive innovation," Linux Foundation chief marketer Amanda McPherson said in a canned statement.

Other new Linux Foundation members announced on Wednesday include Adapteva, makers of the Parallela system boards for parallel computing, and GitHub, the popular source code hosting and collaboration service.

GitHub's service is based on Git, the source code management software originally designed by Linux creator Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development. Torvalds is a Linux Foundation Fellow and is financially supported by the Foundation.

In addition to its new members, the Linux Foundation also announced that Hitachi and NEC have committed resources in support of the Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) project.

Launched in April amid the fallout from the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability, CII aims to identify open source projects deemed essential to the modern internet and provide funding for their ongoing development.

The projects supported by CII include the Network Time Protocol (NTP), the Open Crypto Audit Project (OCAP), OpenSSH, and OpenSSL, and the Linux Foundation says it's evaluating other projects for the program.

"Hitachi and NEC are prioritizing support for some of the world's most important open source projects and will help the industry move from crisis-driven responses to a measured, proactive approach to funding projects that are most in need," Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin said in a statement.

LinuxCon North America is being held in Chicago in tandem with the Linux Foundation's CloudOpen conference through Friday, August 22. ®

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