New Open 3D Foundation launching with over 20 founding members, including Adobe, AWS, Huawei, Niantic, and Red Hat to accelerate developer collaboration on 3D engine development for AAA-games and high-fidelity simulations

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., July 6, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced an intent to form the Open 3D Foundation to accelerate developer collaboration on 3D game and simulation technology. The Open 3D Foundation will support open source projects that advance capabilities related to 3D graphics, rendering, authoring, and development. As the first project governed by the new foundation, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is contributing an updated version of the Amazon Lumberyard game engine as the Open 3D Engine (O3DE), under the permissive Apache 2.0 license. The Open 3D Engine enables developers and content creators to build 3D experiences unencumbered by commercial terms and will provide the support and infrastructure of an open source community through forums, code repositories, and developer events. A developer preview of O3DE is available on GitHub today. For more information and/or to contribute, please visit: https://o3de.org

3D engines are used to create a range of virtual experiences, including games and simulations, by providing capabilities such as 3D rendering, content authoring tools, animation, physics systems, and asset processing. Many developers are seeking ways to build their intellectual property on top of an open source engine where the roadmap is highly visible, openly governed, and collaborative to the community as a whole. More developers look to be able to create or augment their current technological foundations with highly collaborative solutions that can be used in any development environment. O3DE introduces a new ecosystem for developers and content creators to innovate, build, share, and distribute immersive 3D worlds that will inspire their users with rich experiences that bring the imaginations of their creators to life.

Major features of the Open 3D Engine include a new multi-threaded photorealistic renderer, an extensible 3D content editor, a data-driven character animation system, and a node-based visual scripting tool. Developers can build games and new engine features on top of O3DE’s component-based architecture, which enables components of the engine to be used together or independently. Developers will have the flexibility of authoring code with C++, LUA, and python, while animators, technical artists, level designers, and other content creators can work directly with O3DE’s built-in authoring tools to create 3D experiences.

The Open 3D Foundation and Open 3D Engine Project will enable developers to collaborate on building games and simulations as well as the underlying engine. It includes a Governing Board focused on business and budget decisions and a Technical Steering Committee dedicated to technical strategy and community management. The Project is organized into Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that include: Build/Dev Pipeline; Simulation Engine; Content Creation; Network & Cloud; Presentation; Documentation/Demo; Release; Security; and Testing. The O3DE community welcomes contributions from all cloud providers, gaming companies, and industries to advance the project.

“We’re proud to offer the 3D development community an unencumbered, AAA-capable, real-time 3D engine with one of the broadest arrays of integrated 3D authoring tools in the industry including a new photorealistic renderer, built for both modern gaming hardware and distributed cloud rendering,” said Bill Vass, VP of Engineering at AWS. “We believe that creating a first-class, community-driven, open-source option will revolutionize real-time 3D development, as Linux did for operating systems and Apache did for the web.”

“The new Open 3D Foundation finally gives gaming and engine developers an opportunity to influence the direction of a major AAA class 3D engine that is sustained for the long term by a worldwide open source community,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO, Linux Foundation. “Furthermore, other industries such as automotive and healthcare can take advantage of embedding the engine and supporting the advancement of the engine to benefit all.”

Founding members of the Open 3D Foundation include AccelByte, Adobe, Apocalypse Studios, Audiokinetic, AWS, Backtrace.io, Carbonated, Futurewei, GAMEPOCH, Genvid Technologies, Hadean, HERE Technologies, Huawei, Intel, International Game Developers Association, KitBash3D, Kythera AI, Niantic, Open Robotics, PopcornFX, Red Hat, Rochester Institute of Technology, SideFX, Tafi, TLM Partners and Wargaming. These members are contributing funding and resources to the foundation as the initial governing members.

The O3DE community is hosting O3DECon on October 12th and invites the wider open source engine community to attend, contribute and learn more about the future of the foundation. Additionally, there will be an O3DE panel at GDC on July 22, 2021. 

Member Comments 

AccelByte

“As a Founding member we are incredibly excited to be part of that push towards a more open, and frankly, industry rejuvenating breakthrough. Open source 3D game engine gives total control, and puts creators back in the driving seat. It will accelerate innovation and foster amazing content and experience creation. At AccelByte we are committed to the deep integration of our tools and backend platform tech to support content creators using O3DE.  We are looking forward to working with the Linux Foundation to make this a reality.” – – Nik Palmer, Product Manager of AccelByte Blackbox.

Adobe

“Adobe is proud to champion the Open 3D Foundation as a founding member. Open source technologies are critical to advance sustainability across 3D industries and beyond. We believe collaborative and agnostic toolsets are the key to not only more healthy and innovative ecosystems but also to furthering the democratization of 3D on a global scale.” – – said Sebastien Deguy, VP of 3D & Immersive at Adobe.

Apocalypse Studios

“The new Open 3D Foundation ushers in a profound change in the video game industry,” said Denis Dyack, CEO of Apocalypse Studios Inc. “O3DE will lead the way for cloud-first development, freeing developers to collaborate without traditional restrictions allowing them to concentrate on creativity, achieving what was once previously impossible. The video game industry will never be the same again.”

Audiokinetic

“We’re very excited about offering an integration of Wwise to O3DE users. We believe it is our duty as the global leader in interactive audio solutions to make our cross-platform technology as accessible as possible,” said Martin Dufour, Audiokinetic CTO. “While we think this is essential for continuing our contributions towards advancements within the gaming and interactive media industry, we also believe that strengthening and empowering the creators community with open source solutions will allow other industries to leverage interactivity as it expands beyond games.”

Backtrace

“The formation of the Open 3D Foundation is a transformative step in accelerating the real-time 3D market through open-source. It feeds into the market trends of game technology democratization, cloud-first game development, and the evolution of multi-faced game development platforms to the benefit of both creators and the ecosystem as a whole. Backtrace is honored to join as a founding member of the Open 3D Foundation and eager to empower O3DE creators with our cross-platform observability solution for real-time 3D,” said Abel Mathew, CEO and co-founder of Backtrace I/O. 

Carbonated

“As a mobile-first studio, we’re honored and excited to be a founding member of the Open 3D Foundation,” said Travis Boatman, CEO of Carbonated Inc. “Our titles must perform on a myriad of devices, and tap into cloud-enabled services in order to drive forever games for our players.  We chose O3DE as foundational tech because it delivers on all of our needs while being completely free and open source.”

Futurewei

“The open sourcing, with the Linux Foundation of this important platform for game development is a big step for spatial computing and I’m very excited to see where it leads!” said Tish Shute (Leichliter), Futurewei Technologies, Inc.

GAMEPOCH

“Successful implementation of cloud-native games requires not only a fundamental shift in design paradigm but equally important is the availability of enabling technologies. The O3DE initiative is an important catalyst for empowering creators in the new era of cloud-native gaming,” said Stephanie Chen, Founder & CEO, GAMEPOCH.

Genvid Technologies

“Creators and businesses both benefit when there are open source tools available to them. We are big believers that game engines and interactive streaming will change not just video games but entertainment in general, and think that the mission of the Open 3D Foundation is important not just to our industry (gaming) but our metaverse future. We are honored to join as a founding member of the Open 3D Foundation and are eager to bring our cross-platform interactive streaming services to its developers,” said Jacob Navok, co-founder and CEO of Genvid Technologies, Inc. 

Hadean

“The release of a fully open source AAA-quality game engine has the potential to significantly reshape the games industry and Hadean is thrilled to be able to support it. We are particularly excited by the modularity goals of O3DE and the potential for integration with our highly scalable distributed simulation engine, in pursuit of a more open ecosystem for gaming and simulation,” said Aidan Hobson-Sayers, technical director, Hadean.

HERE Technologies

“As a location platform at the forefront of mapping the world’s road networks and urban centers in 3D, we are excited to join the Open 3D Foundation as a founding member,” said Giovanni Lanfranchi, Senior Vice President Development and Chief Technology Officer at HERE Technologies. “We intend to contribute to the 3D engine code as well as provide expertise that can help developers create 3D-rich location-based experiences for gaming and a broad array of enterprise and mobility use cases.” 

Huawei

“We are thrilled to support and participate in the formation of the Open 3D Foundation as a Premier Member,” said Bryan Che, Chief Strategy Officer, Huawei Technologies. “3D graphics are vital to how we connect billions of people around the world, including in our mobile devices, laptops, AR/VR systems, and smart screens; cloud-based gaming and media services; and more. Bringing the power of open source across all these areas and beyond will greatly enhance the innovation and value of 3D visuals.

IGDA

“We are proud to be supporting the O3DE project and the democratization of game development technology through open source. It is our mission to support and empower game developers in achieving fulfilling and sustainable careers, and access to cutting-edge development tools and their source code will enable more studios and developers to thrive. We are sure to see the O3DE project and Open 3D Foundation lead to new innovation within our industry and improve video games and other 3D experiences for everyone,” said Renee Gittins, executive director, International Game Developers Association.  

Intel

“Intel is excited and honored to join with AWS, the Linux Foundation and other industry partners to form the Open 3D Engine Foundation. We know well through the variety of Linux Foundation projects we already support that open software is a major driver of innovation. Such projects as O3DE enable the collective energy and mind-power of the best developers in the world to deliver robust, stable and next generation technology to everyone sooner. We are delighted to contribute a wide array of Intel’s advanced photorealistic and high-performance visual technology, including Intel® OSPRay and other components in the Intel® oneAPI Rendering Toolkit, for the best 3D visual impact to a wide array of applications,” said Jim Jeffers, senior principal engineer and senior director of Intel Advanced Rendering and Visualization Architecture.

KitBash3D

“As creators begin to check out the O3DE, it’s important that they can quickly build a world and get excited about using the engine. To help them reach this magic moment, we’re providing a sampling of the KitBash3D premium asset library to come FREE within the O3DE – giving users the tools they need to create worlds and save countless hours of work in the process. We are very happy to be a part of this project’s launch and can’t wait to see all the amazing things creators make with it!” — Banks Boutté, Co-founder, KitBash3D

Kythera AI

“The O3DE Project is a game changer,” said Matthew Jack, CEO of Kythera AI, an established supplier of the industry’s most comprehensive AI middleware. “It’s a big step in the democratization and accessibility of game development, with users gaining access to cutting-edge tools previously affordable only to AAA studios. As a founding member of O3DE we have chosen to make the power of Kythera AI available to all as an Open3D Gem. Developers will save thousands of hours and achieve sophisticated, dynamic behaviors for any genre, out of the box, and at scale.  As a result, users of O3DE can deliver an unrivalled experience to players – and fill their stunning worlds with intelligent life!”

Niantic

“Niantic’s mission is to encourage exploring and togetherness, which is why our Real World Platform offers cross-platform APIs and tools that simplify the development of AR applications for mobile devices,” said Phil Keslin, CTO, Niantic. “Being a founding member of the exciting Open 3D Foundation follows that spirit of openness and togetherness. Open standards help democratize innovation, which is why we support arming developers with a fully open source cross-platform 3D engine, as it will remove major hurdle to creativity and will help their focus on AR world building. We’re honored to be able to provide developers with this framework to deliver amazing, shared AR experiences through the conduit of our real-world AR mobile games.”

Open Robotics

We are happy to support the Open 3D Foundation’s goal of providing a high-quality open source 3D engine and we are honored to be a founding member. Given our history with open source software for the robotics industry, we are intimately familiar with the power of collaboration and community. We look forward to O3DE helping to grow this initiative and to one day bring these capabilities to robotics simulation,” said Brian Gerkey, CEO, Open Robotics.

PopcornFX

“We believe in collaboration and sharing across industries. By gathering ambitious individuals and organizations from multiple industries, O3DE is a path to a bright future. As founder members of O3DF, we will bring PopcornFX GeM and our ability to work closely with production teams. With partners and community, our offer and capabilities will continue to improve in order to bring cutting edge solutions for realtime VFX,” said Maxime Dumas, owner, PopcornFX.

Red Hat 

“As a leader in open source solutions, Red Hat knows how instrumental open source communities can be in creating innovative solutions to the pressing needs and challenges of various industries. We’re honored to be a founding member of the Open 3D Foundation, an initiative that will empower developers to collaborate and thereby shape the future of 3D visual experiences,” said Deborah Bryant, Senior Director, Open Source Program Office.

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)

“Since I teach courses in Game Design and Development and in our Minor in Free and One Source Software and Free Culture, this checks all the boxes for bringing more enterprise open source collaboration to the gaming industry,” said Stephen Jacobs, Director, Rochester Institute of Technology’s Open Programs Office, Open@RIT. “This will be a great opportunity for RIT students, faculty and staff to make contributions to the engine and, as we’re part of the Foundation, to engage at a level that actually helps shape its direction. This is  especially important for our students to work with the professionals in the field. Students in the Open Source course I’m teaching this semester will have the option to work with the foundation for their required FOSS contributions.”

SideFX

“Empowering artists with tools they need to create immersive virtual worlds is at the heart of everything we do at SideFX. So we’re thrilled to be a founding member of the Open 3D Foundation. We truly believe that open, collaboraitve workflows are the future of 3D – and we’re proud to be a part of this important initiative driving into that future,” said Cristin Barghiel, VP of product development at SideFX.

Tafi

“At Tafi, our vision is to empower creators and democratize 3D avatar solutions across the virtual worlds. As such, the Open 3D Engine project aligns perfectly with our shared belief in open collaboration and mass innovation,” said Preston Woo, Chief Strategy Officer, Tafi. “We are proud to be a founding member of the O3DF in partnership with Amazon, the Linux Foundation, and other industry leaders, and we look forward to supporting the development of this new open source 3D engine.”

TLM Partners

“The O3DE project opens the door to a AAA engine for indies and underserved markets. We see room in the market for a third engine that is a transformative step towards collaboration and will drive exponential creativity and growth,” said Jake Hawley, founder and CEO of TLM Partners. “As a publisher of Cross-Play games, TLM is excited to support the development of a cloud connected, cross-platform and open source engine that aligns with our belief that the future of game development is predicated on pioneering tools and technology that facilitate creative and collaborative expression without the need for a physical space.”

Wargaming

“We at FragLab believe that having a game engine with quality rendering is not enough. Nowadays the more technical side of game development is quickly changing and the ability to adapt your solutions in real-time is extremely important. O3DE has a proven foundation to be not only a high-quality game engine, but also be flexible enough to quickly react to different users’ demands, starting from integrating 3rd party AI systems to new game servers’ orchestration backend technologies,” said Sergey Rustamov, technical director at Wargaming. 

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

About Amazon Web Services

For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 81 Availability Zones (AZs) within 25 geographic regions, with announced plans for 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Spain, and Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

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Linux Foundation Events are the meeting place of choice for open source maintainers, developers, architects, infrastructure managers and sysadmins, as well as technologists leading open source program offices, devrel teams and other critical leadership functions.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 30, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced that registration is open for many of its Fall 2021 events, for both in-person and virtual attendance. The Linux Foundation hosts the premier open source events around the world that empower technologists and other leaders to come together, share ideas, learn and collaborate to drive innovation.

In 2021, Linux Foundation Events will see over 90,000 open source community members from around the globe participate in-person and/or virtually.  Discussions will center around the latest open source trends, emerging technology developments and best practices surrounding 5G, IoT, cloud computing, open networking, security, embedded Linux, OS databases, AI, software architecture, edge computing, open source program office management, fintech, and much more. New events hosted by The Linux Foundation this year include OSPOCon and OSPOCon Europe. 

“We are ecstatic to return to in-person events, as we believe these face to face gatherings are so important to accelerating collaboration and progress,” said Angela Brown, SVP & GM, Events, The Linux Foundation. “Additionally, we will continue to offer a virtual component for our events as well, allowing anyone, anywhere to participate online. We look forward to welcoming everyone and hope you will join us.”

Registration is now open for the following Linux Foundation events.  Please visit each event’s website for information on early bird pricing, venues and more.

Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference
Sept 27 – 30, 2021
Seattle, Washington / Virtual
OSPOCon
Sept 27 – 29, 2021
Seattle, Washington / Virtual
Linux Security Summit
Sept 29 – Oct 1, 2021
Seattle, Washington / Virtual
Open Networking & Edge Summit + Kubernetes on Edge Day
Oct 11 – 12, 2021 
Los Angeles, California / Virtual
Open Source Strategy Forum
Oct 4 – 5, 2021 
London, United Kingdom
OSPOCon Europe
Oct 6, 2021
London, United Kingdom
Open Source Strategy Forum
Nov 9 – 10, 2021
New York City, New York

These events join KVM Forum, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Open Source Summit Japan + Automotive Linux Summit and many more that have already opened registration.  Please see a full list of Linux Foundation Events here. 

Discounts, Scholarships and Travel Funding
Members of The Linux Foundation receive a 20 percent discount off registration.  Members can contact events@linuxfoundation.org to request a member discount code. 

The Linux Foundation provides diversity and need-based registration scholarships for each event listed above.  For more information on eligibility and how to apply, please visit the event’s website, click the “Attend” tab and select the “Scholarships” option. 

The Linux Foundation’s Travel Fund is intended to enable open source developers and community members to attend events that they would otherwise be unable to attend due to a lack of funding. Please click here for more information.

Health and Safety
After careful consideration, we have decided that the safest course of action for returning to in-person events this fall is to take a “COVID-19 vaccine required” approach to participating in-person. To learn more, please read our blog post and visit the Health & Safety page, under the “Attend” tab on any of our event websites. 

Speak
Linux Foundation events are an excellent way to get to know the community and share your ideas and the exciting work that you are doing. We strongly encourage first-time speakers and members of underrepresented communities to submit. If you aren’t sure about your abstract or have any questions, please reach out to us and we will be more than happy to work with you on your proposal.

The call for speaking proposals for the following events is still open. Individuals are invited to speak in person or virtually. Please visit each event’s website (linked below) to view suggested topics, timelines and more.

Linux Security Summit (Deadline: July 11)

Open Source Strategy Summit London (Deadline: July 11)

Open Source Strategy Summit NYC (Deadline: July 11)

OSPOCon Europe (Deadline: July 18)

The Linux Foundation Member Summit (Deadline: August 1. In-person only)

Open Source Summit Japan + Automotive Linux Summit (Deadline: August 29. Virtual only)

Sponsor
LF event sponsorship packages offer speaking sessions & keynotes, lead generation programs, prominent branding opportunities and more; enabling you to make an important impact on the ecosystem, showcase your technologies and deliver your message. Click here to learn more about how you can share your thought leadership and support the entire global open source community. Email us for more information or to speak to our team.

Press
Members of the press who would like to attend and/or request a media pass should contact Kristin O’Connell at koconnell@linuxfoundation.org.

About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation Events are where the world’s leading technologists meet, collaborate, learn and network in order to advance innovations that support the world’s largest shared technologies.

Visit our website and follow us on Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook for all the latest event updates and announcements.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. 

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Media Contact:
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The Linux Foundation
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Recipients will gain technical skills to start or advance their open source careers

SAN FRANCISCO — June 30, 2021 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, has announced the recipients of the 2021 Linux Foundation Training (LiFT) Scholarships. LiFT aims to increase diversity in open source technology by providing access to online and in-person training and certification exams for underserved demographics at no cost to the recipient. Since 2010, The Linux Foundation has awarded over 1,100 scholarships for millions of dollars worth of specialized, technical training to those who may not have the ability to afford this opportunity otherwise. 

This year, The Linux Foundation awarded scholarships to 500 of the over 1,250 applicants who vied to be selected in one of ten categories. 

This year’s selected pool of talent represents the potential for greatness in future participation in the open source community. Ages of recipients range from 13 to 68 with the average age being 30 years old. With the recipients also coming from 107 countries on six continents, the open source novices and seasoned tech professionals selected to receive this year’s scholarships serve as a reminder that interest in open source and technology generally crosses all demographics.

“We are excited to have our most diverse group of LiFT scholarship candidates ever,” said Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. “When the COVID-19 pandemic struck last year, we decided to vastly increase the number of scholarships to 500 to be awarded in order to help some of those affected. With the effects of the pandemic lingering, we realized it was essential to award 500 again this year rather than return to historic levels. The level of talent and potential evident amongst this year’s winners is staggering, and we are happy to be able to contribute to their future success.” 

Highlighted scholarship recipients for 2021 in each category are: 

Blockchain Blockbusters

Saba Kifle, 34, USA

Saba is a UN Delegate for the UN Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development and a part of the Women of Color in Blockchain Congressional Caucus. She is one of the few queer black woman working in the space and is very passionate about inspiring others in her community to get involved in blockchain. With this training, Saba – who speaks four languages – hopes to be better able to reach those who are more technically trained and may be interested in learning more about blockchain.

Santiago Figueroa-Lorenzo, 33, Spain

Santiago is a blockchain researcher at the University of Navarra who has run into difficulties performing efficient and immediate deployments of blockchain networks so that the proofs of concept to be performed are more immediate. He has accumulated experience working with technologies such as NodeJS, Web3JS, ReactJS, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Indy, and Hyperledger Besu. Santiago hopes that obtaining a Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator (CHFA) certification will reduce the learning curve, allowing him to focus on the research itself.

Cloud Captains

Badisa Mosesane, 29, Botswana

Badisa is a student at the University of Botswana where he studies computer science. He has been working with engineers developing automatic software deployments on High Performance Computing Linux clusters as an intern at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in the USA, where he developed a platform for visualizing cluster performance metrics, built a cloud-based user support cognitive chatbot, and supports advanced cyberinfrastructure operations of this major supercomputing center.

Andrija Sagic, 44, Serbia

Andrija is a cultural heritage digitization professional who heads the Digital Development Department for the Milutin Bojic Library, where he is trying to find a sustainable solution for the need for small cultural institutions to present their digital content, namely storage and web access. He hopes the training he receives from this scholarship will help him to achieve that goal.

Developer Do-Gooders

Danson Muia, 25, Kenya

Danson works to develop software tools that solve problems at a local level using open source solutions. One recent project he created is an online property management system for small landlords in Kenya. He has open sourced much of his code on GitHub, and hopes the knowledge he gains from this scholarship will enable him to create and share even better tools to benefit his community.

Pablo Velasquez, 32, Colombia

Pablo is a part of an organization in Medellin called Global Shapers, which strives to increase digital literacy and inclusion in the region. Projects he has worked on include an online system for arranging food donations and distribution to those in need, and setting up a local network to provide internet access to children. He plans to use the scholarship to study Node.js and use the open source technology to help even more people in his community.

Linux Kernel Gurus

Vandana Salve, 47, India

Vandana has years of experience working with the Linux kernel. From building Linux embedded systems for board support packages to developing device drivers and working on kernel security, she has contributed significantly to the community. She hopes to use this training to gain additional skills that will enable her to contribute even more to open source.

Alaa Emad Hossney, 31, Egypt

Alaa, who has a degree in embedded system engineering, participated in a Linux kernel mentorship in the spring of 2021, where she worked on fixing bugs in the kernel. She also was an Outreachy intern at Mozilla, where she worked on adding features on Firefox. She plans to use the knowledge she gains from this scholarship to pursue a career as a kernel developer, with a focus on embedded systems.

Networking Notables

Nathalia Nascimento, 28, Brazil

Nathalia has been working with Linux servers since 2009. After finishing university with a degree in computer engineering, she wanted to deepen her knowledge about computer networks but found the high level of vendor lock-in frustrating. She began learning about Software Defined Networking (SDN) and for the past five years has been working to implement it. Nathalia hopes to gain more knowledge about SDN and open networking generally from this training, in order to implement fully open source network infrastructures.

Ashish Kashinath, 30, USA

Ashish is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he works on SDN solutions for safety-critical networks. His work focuses on predictability in terms of latency and bandwidth guarantees for such networks, and has developed SDN applications using open networking tools like OpenFlow and OpenvSwitch. Ashish is excited to use this scholarship to learn more about Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and apply that knowledge to his research.

Open Source Newbies

Zivile Silveira, 37, Brazil

Zivile studied economics in school and has been a homemaker in recent years, but wants to transition careers with the goal of becoming a data engineer. She is fairly new to Linux and software development generally, but enjoyed learning about the command line and various applications of Linux in The Linux Foundation’s free Introduction to Linux course. Zivile hopes the knowledge she gains studying system administration with this scholarship will help her advance toward her career goals.

Tan Shaella Suhendro, 25, Indonesia

Shaella studied interior design at university, but has since become interested in STEM. Interior design and architecture software tools are typically proprietary, so she wanted to learn more about open source alternatives. She has been independently studying open source tools and programming languages including C, Python and R. One of the things Shaella did to learn more about open source is complete The Linux Foundation’s free Introduction to Linux course, where she enjoyed learning about the command line and tricks to use Linux more efficiently. She sees the training provided by this scholarship as the next step in her journey to learning more about technology.

SysAdmin Super Stars

Juan Luis Porras Loria, 31, Italy

Juan Luis is pursuing a masters degree in geophysics at the University of Pisa, where he has installed geophysical processing software on Linux environments. Originally from Costa Rica, he worked as a research assistant at the seismological observatory where he helped maintain and secure Linux servers, and deployed virtual machines to perform specific tasks and ensure connections between end-users and the Linux servers. Juan Luis would like to use this training to become a system administrator who helps the geosciences field to implement more open source software.

Zafer Balkan, 33, Turkey
Zafer is a graduate of the Turkish Military Academy and currently serves with the NATO Deployable Corps while pursuing a cybersecurity degree at Tallinn University. He has also worked in developer, security and sysadmin roles for both the Turkish military and NATO. Zafer hopes to use the knowledge gained from this scholarship to encourage the use of more open source tools in defense to reduce vendor lock-in and improve security.

Teens-in-Training

Monil Vadodariya, 16, India

Monil is a straight-A student in high school who appreciates how important open source tools are for advancing new technologies like AI, machine learning, and blockchain. In his spare time he volunteers to teach younger kids about technology. Monil has participated in a number of hackathons, and helped develop software tools for his school including a proctored quiz system. 

Mateo León, 17, Chile

Mateo is a senior in high school who wants to study software engineering. He has taught himself about a number of technologies including programming languages like Java, Python, and C++, and developed his own cryptocurrency forked from Bitcoin. He has contributed to open source cryptocurrency projects by serving as an English-Spanish translator. Mateo hopes to use the knowledge gained from this scholarship to be a more effective developer.

Web Development Wiz

Olufemi Benjamin Anjorin, 21, Nigeria

Olufemi is a physics student at the University of Lagos who works part time as a software engineer. He uses open source technologies daily for projects such as building an open source interactive voice response system for crowdsourcing real time reports during natural disasters and other crises in Nigeria. Olufemi hopes this scholarship will build his technical skills to grow as a software engineer, and help him develop innovative software and systems solutions to solve problems within his community.

George Gognadze, 26, Georgia

George is pursuing a masters degree in computer science who is passionate about open source. He built the first web application in Georgia to report bullying, and has been involved in numerous local technology events. He hopes to be able to share the knowledge he gains from this scholarship with others in his community, and begin contributing back to the broader open source community.

Women in Open Source 

Fakhar un Nisa, 29, Pakistan

Fakhar is a trained veterinarian who is pursuing a PhD with a focus in cattle genomics. She is using Linux for analysis and interpretation of data around genotyping of different cattle breeds. Although she has little experience with Linux, Fakhar hopes that the training from this scholarship will make her more effective in her research, and believes strongly that the future of her field will be led by bioinformatics.

Dalal Mouani, 22, Morocco

Dalal, who speaks five languages, is currently pursuing a masters degree in data science. She eventually hopes to achieve a PhD in intelligent systems and to build intelligent applications. She has already built an OCR program for her university, and a web application for emotion detection. Dalal hopes this scholarship will give her skills she can use to improve her application development goals.

Additional Resources

The full list of 2021 LiFT Scholarship recipients can be viewed here

Photographs of 2021 LiFT Scholarship recipients can be downloaded here

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is a complete, formally structured list of components, libraries, and modules required to build (i.e., compile and link) a given piece of software and the supply chain relationships between them. These components can be open source or proprietary, free or paid, and widely available or restricted access. SBOMs that can be shared without friction between teams and companies are a core part of software management for critical industries and digital infrastructure in the coming decades.

SBOMs are especially critical for a national digital infrastructure used within government agencies and in critical industries that present national security risks if penetrated. SBOMs would improve understanding of those software components’ operational and cyber risks from their originating supply chain.

This SBOM readiness survey is the Linux Foundation’s first project addressing how to secure the software supply chain. The foundation of this project is a worldwide survey of IT professionals who understand their organization’s approach to software development, procurement, compliance, or security.  Organizations surveyed will include both software producers and consumers. An important driver for this survey is the recent Executive Order on Cybersecurity, which focuses on producing and consuming SBOMs.

The objectives of the survey are as follows:

How concerned are organizations about software security?How familiar are organizations with SBOMs?How ready are organizations to consume and produce SBOMs?What is your commitment to the timeline for addressing SBOMs?What benefits do you expect to derive from SBOMs?What concerns you about SBOMs?What capabilities are needed in SBOMs?What do organizations need to improve their SBOM operability?How important are SBOMS relative to other ways to secure the software supply chain?

Data from this survey will enable the development of a maturity model that will focus on how the increasing value provided by SBOMs as organizations build out their SBOM capabilities.

The survey is available in seven languages:

EnglishChineseJapaneseKoreanGermanFrenchRussian

To take the 2021 State of SBOM Readiness Survey, click the button for your desired language/region below:

BONUS

As a thank-you for your participation, you will receive a 20% registration discount to attend the Open Source Summit/Embedded Linux Conference event upon completion of the survey. Please note this discount is not transferable, and may not be combined with other offers.

PRIVACY

Personally identifiable information will not be published. Reviews are attributed to your role, company size, and industry. Responses will be subject to the Linux Foundation’s Privacy Policy, available at https://linuxfoundation.org/privacy. 

VISIBILITY

We will summarize the survey data and share the findings at the Open Source Summit/Embedded Linux Conference in September.

QUESTIONS

If you have questions regarding this survey, please email us at research@linuxfoundation.org. 

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