Authors: John Mertic, Maemalynn Meanor, Jason Perlow

The mainframe is a foundational technology that has powered industries for decades, including government, financial, healthcare, and transportation. With the help of surrounding communities, the technologies built around this platform have paved the way for the emergence of a new set of technologies we see deployed today. Notably, a significant number of mainframe technologies are profoundly embracing open source.

Linux comes to the mainframe

As Linux began to take the world by storm in the 1990s, a small group of mainframe enthusiasts started experimenting with Linux on IBM System 390 (a previously current generation of mainframe hardware). Over the last 20 years, others like Hitachi and Fujitsu also invested in enabling open source and Linux on their mainframe platforms. Linux on mainframe marked its official start on December 18, 1999, with IBM publishing a collection of patches and additions to the Linux 2.2.13 kernel. 

The year 2000 brought momentum to Linux on the mainframe. The first true “Linux distribution” for these systems came in early 2000 as a collaboration between Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Think Blue Linux by Millenux in Germany. By October of that year, SUSE became the first vendor-supported Linux Distribution, in the first release of what’s now known as SUSE Enterprise Linux. SUSE’s first s390x distro represented an early example of the mainframe leading the way in the evolution of computing technology.

Today, nine known Linux distributions currently provide an s390x architecture variant: Alpine, ClefOS, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, RHEL, SUSE, and Ubuntu.

The expansion of the mainframe as a platform for Linux continues to be nurtured in the Open Mainframe Project, with key projects outlined below helping Linux on the mainframe continue to be a platform used by Fortune 100 companies worldwide.

Feilong, which provides an interface between z/VM (the primary hypervisor for mainframe, is directly based on technology and concepts dating back to the 1960s) and modern cloud stack systems such as OpenStack, is jointly developed by IBM, SUSE, and others.Tessia is a tool that automates and simplifies the installation, configuration, and testing of Linux systems running on the Z platform.

Developments in COBOL 

COBOL, which stands for “Common Business-Oriented Language,” is a compiled, English-like computer programming language developed for use as a business applications language. Its roots go back to the 1950s, and COBOL is still frequently used in many industries for key applications.

The COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020 put high levels of stress on various government services due to the unprecedented number of unemployment applications and other similar needs. This put the spotlight on COBOL, as it was then the predominant technology used for these systems. This also highlighted the perceived lack of talent to support these systems, which have code going back to the 1960s. 

The vast COBOL and mainframe communities quickly addressed this need and made several efforts to provide a sustainable home for COBOL.

Calling all COBOL Programmers Forum – an Open Mainframe Project forum where developers and programmers who would like to volunteer can post their profiles or are available for hire. Whether they are actively looking for employment, retired skilled veterans looking to stay involved, students who have completed COBOL courses, or are professionals wanting to volunteer, the forum offers the opportunity for job seekers to specify their level of expertise and availability to assist. Employers can then connect with these individuals as needed. 

COBOL Technical Forum – a new forum created specifically to address COBOL technical questions in which experienced COBOL programmers monitor activity. The forum allows all programmers to quickly learn new techniques and draw from a broad range of community expertise to address common questions and challenges exacerbated during this unprecedented time. Open Source COBOL Training – the Open Mainframe Project Technical Advisory Council has approved hosting a new open source project that will lead collaborative efforts to create training materials on COBOL. The courseware was contributed by IBM based on its work with clients and institutions for higher education and is provided under an open source license. 

These initiatives were followed by a formal COBOL Working Group established later in 2020 to address the long-term challenges in building a sustainable COBOL ecosystem. 

In early 2021, attention turned to the tooling ecosystem for COBOL developers with the launch of the COBOL Check project. This initiative enables test-driven development (TDD) practices for COBOL by providing a unit testing framework.

Zowe brings together the industry leaders to drive the future development paradigms of the mainframe

Traditionally, organizations have been challenged by integrating mainframe applications and data with the other systems that power their enterprise. This integration task further created a talent development challenge, as the paradigms between mainframe and other enterprise computing systems differed enough to make skills not easily transferable.

Broadcom, IBM, and Rocket Software saw this challenge and independently developed various frameworks to close this gap with the mainframe development experience. These include:

An API Mediation Layer for standardizing the API experience for mainframe applications and servicesA CLI tool that could be run on a developer’s laptop or other non-mainframe systems and used for DevOps tooling integration.A Web Desktop interface to make it easier to develop web-based applications that leverage mainframe services and data using common development toolkits.

These components came together in August 2018 in Zowe, which was the first open source project launched that targeted the z/OS operating system (the predominant operating system on mainframe systems). The intention of bringing this project into the vendor-neutral Open Mainframe Project was to establish Zowe as the dominant development and integration tool for mainframe systems, aligning the mainframe community around Zowe.

After Zowe 1.0 was released in February 2019, the project quickly turned to enable a downstream ecosystem of vendor offerings to flourish by establishing the Zowe Conformance Program in August 2019. To date, there are more than 50 Zowe Conformant offerings from 6 different vendors in the mainframe industry.

In addition, Zowe has brought new projects into its scope, with the following incubator projects as of August 2021:

ZEBRA, which provides re-usable and industry compliant JSON formatted RMF/SMF data records so that many other ISV SW and users can exploit them using open-source SW in many ways (contributed by Vicom Infinity).Workflow WiZard helps developers and systems programmers simplify the generation and management of z/OSMF workflows (contributed by BMC).

Zowe boasts more than 300 contributors with more than 34,000 contributions as of August 2021.

Mentorship to support the mainframes of tomorrow

Open Mainframe Project has experienced record growth in contributions this year, with more than 105.31 Million Lines of Code written and over 9,600 commits submitted by Open Mainframe Project communities to date— a 100 percent increase across 20 projects and working groups. These numbers will only increase as Open Mainframe continues to be the cornerstone of governance and innovation for modernizing the mainframe and its path to IoT, Cloud, and Edge Computing.

But the mainframe workforce is aging — in fact, many organizations employ mainframers who half or more of their staff will be eligible for retirement soon. The aging workforce will be a global issue as many schools have shifted from teaching mainframe skills and important languages like COBOL and assembler. Some students don’t even know what a mainframe is or aren’t aware they use one each day. 

The mainframe isn’t going away, so that means we need to get younger mainframers on board.

That’s why the Linux Foundation chose to help close the skills gap through education and training. Through the Open Mainframe Project’s Mentorship program, the project offered a hands-on experience in an open source environment with leaders from member companies such as BMC/Compuware, Broadcom, IBM, Micro Focus, Rocket Software, and many others.

This year, the mentorship program welcomed its largest mentee class from around the globe that worked on popular projects such as ATOM, COBOL Programming Course, COBOL Working Group, Mainframe Open Education, Polycephaly, Software Discovery Tool, and Zowe. Through one-on-one conversations, collaborative community meetings, technical development, and accessibility to mainframe technology, Open Mainframe helped lay the groundwork for the next generation of mainframers. 

Additionally, as COBOL continues to be on-demand this year, Open Mainframe continued to enhance resources: 

The COBOL Programming Course, which also became the first Open Mainframe project to complete the lifecycle and graduate to become a mature active project, went through an extensive overhaul to provide more detailed content for a better experience and deeper understanding for students and developers looking for a refresher course.COBOL Check launched in March to improve the design, understandability, maintainability, and longevity of core business applications. It supports IBM’s mainframe modernization program by enabling restructuring of existing applications of APIs. COBOL Check will complement the COBOL Programming Course and will leverage the support of the COBOL Working Group.

The future is bright for the mainframe

The mainframe has seen a resurgence in the past five years, with the launch of the Open Mainframe Project and the industry coming together in key open source projects in the COBOL, Linux on System Z, and z/OS ecosystems. The Open Mainframe Project hosts more than 20 projects and working groups supported by over 45 organizations as of August 2021, with no signs of slowing anytime soon.

Open Mainframe Summit 2021

For the second consecutive year, Open Mainframe Project hosted its flagship event virtually on September 22-23.

The theme of this year’s Open Mainframe Summit expanded beyond the mainframe to highlight influencers with strengths in the areas supporting or leveraging the technology like continuous delivery, edge computing, financial services, and open source. Keynote speakers for the event included Gabriele Columbro, Executive Director of Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS); Jason Shepherd, Vice President of Ecosystem at ZEDEDA and Chair of the LF Edge Governing Board; Jono Bacon, a leading community and collaboration speaker and founder of Jono Bacon Consulting; Steve Winslow, Vice President of Compliance and Legal at The Linux Foundation; Tracy Ragan, CEO and Co-Founder of DeployHub and Continuous Delivery Foundation Board Member, and more.

The event also highlighted projects, diversity, and business topics that offered seasoned professionals, developers, students, and leaders an opportunity to share best practices and network with like-minded individuals.

Open Mainframe Summit ended with 219 registered attendees that represented 83 companies. During the conference, there were 167 unique users on the platform, a 77% attendance rate, which is a slight increase when compared to last year.

The conference videos are available on the Open Mainframe Project Youtube Channel. Click here for the complete playlist.

These efforts are made possible by the dozens of enterprises that support the Open Mainframe Project. To learn how your organization can get involved, click here

The post In Case You Missed It: State of the Open Mainframe 2021 appeared first on Linux Foundation.

Author: Chris Friedt, Sofware Release Manager, Zephyr Project

Here we are – 2 ½ years since the release of Zephyr Long Term Support (LTS) V1.

In what seems like the blink of an eye, Linux has turned 30 and has gone where no penguin has gone before. Some may forget that the Zephyr Real-Time Operating System went to space, too (albeit under a different name).

Meanwhile, here on Earth, the Zephyr Project received 26,845 commits, 1,764,230 lines of code added, and published ten tagged releases since the LTS V1.

Our contributing community continues to grow – 500 to 1384. If you haven’t met our Embla Flatlandsmo, our 1000th contributor, you can do so here. Numerous Zephyr-based products have been launched (one day, I would like to know just how many). Companies have been formed around Zephyr, and many of them contribute back to the Zephyr Project on GitHub.

Zephyr is now a common theme at technical conferences:

Of course, the very first Zephyr Developer Summit was held this yearOpen Source Summit featured several Zephyr-related talksAt Linux Plumbers Conference, Zephyr was a consistent theme in both the IoT Micro-conference as well as the Refereed TrackAt the Embedded Linux Conference, we had a live demonstration of the Zephyr RTOS, broadcast across the globe, going from 0 to “Hello, world!” in 1 minute!

Let’s take a quick look at some of the changes that have enabled Zephyr’s success.

What’s New in LTS V2

In September, when we said that this is the biggest release of Zephyr ever, we weren’t kidding! Below are some of the highlights extracted from the complete v2.7.0 ChangeLog.

Zephyr SDK users should adopt the new Zephyr 0.13.1 SDK releaseThe new SDK includesinitial support for building Zephyr on macOSupdated Qemu version to 6.0.0updated to GCC 10.3updated to support ARC64improved C++ supportswitched to using newlib-nanoupdated to Yocto 3.2.3 baselineupdated OpenOCD snapshot

Major enhancements with this release include

Bluetooth Audio, Direction Finding, and Mesh improvementsSupport for Bluetooth Advertisement PDU ChainingAdded support for armclang / armlinker toolchain via toolchain abstractionAdded support for MWDT C / C++ toolchain via toolchain abstractionUpdate to CMSIS v5.8.0 (Core v5.5.0, DSP v1.9.0)Support for M-Profile Vector Extensions (MVE) on ARMv8.1-MImproved thread safety for Newlib and C++ on SMP-capable systemsIEEE 802.15.4 Software Address FilteringNew Action-based Power Management APIUSB Device Framework now includes all Chapter 9 defines and structuresGeneric System Controller (syscon) driver and emulatorLinker Support for Tightly-Coupled Memory in RISC-VAdditional Blocking API calls for LoRaSupport for extended PCI / PCIe capabilities and improved MIS-X supportAdded Service Type Enumeration (STE) with mDNS / DNS Service DiscoveryAdded Zephyr Thread Awareness for OpenOCD to WestEEPROM now can be emulated in flashAdded both Ethernet MDIO and Ethernet generic PHY drivers

Growth Since LTS V1

Since LTS 1.14.0, the number of unique contributors to the Zephyr Project has nearly tripled from 500 to 1384. Zephyr is now supported on more than twice as many boards, increasing from 160 to 400, and now runs on 12 different architectures (counting ARM cortex-a, cortex-r, and ARC64). Our peak commit velocity has nearly doubled from 1.4 to 2.5 commits per hour.

Zephyr’s team of maintainers has doubled from approximately 25 to 50 and our team of collaborators has nearly tripled from 30 to 81.

The total number of distinct areas (subsystems, OS features, etc.) requiring maintainership in Zephyr has increased from 80 to 113, and there are no signs of slowing down.

1.14.0 (LTS V1)2.7.0 (LTS V2)Contributors5001384Boards160400Architectures812Commit Velocity1.4 commits per hour2.5 commits per hour# of Maintainers~2550# of Collaborators~3081# of Areas~80113

Major Enhancements Since LTS V1

Most of our community members have eagerly adopted tagged releases. Still, for companies that have based products on the LTS V1 release, there have been a tremendous number of major enhancements since then.

The kernel now supports both 32- and 64-bit architecturesWe added support for SOCKS5 proxyIntroduced support for 6LoCAN, a 6Lo adaption layer for Controller Area NetworksWe added support for Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)We added support for UpdateHub, an end-to-end solution for over-the-air device updatesWe added support for ARM Cortex-R ArchitectureNormalized APIs across all architecturesExpanded support for ARMv6-M architectureAdded support for numerous new boards and shieldsAdded numerous new drivers and sensorsAdded BLE support on Vega platformMemory size improvements to Bluetooth host stackWe added initial support for 64-bit ARMv8-A architectureCANopen protocol support through 3rd party CANopenNode stackLoRa support was added along with the SX1276 LoRa modem driverA new Zephyr CMake package has been introducedA new Devicetree API which provides access to virtually all DT nodes and propertiesThe kernel timeout API has been overhauledA new k_heap/sys_heap allocator, with improved performanceZephyr now integrates with the TF-M (Trusted Firmware M) PSA-compliant frameworkThe Bluetooth Low Energy Host now supports LE Advertising ExtensionsThe CMSIS-DSP library is now included and integratedIntroduced initial support for virtual memory managementAdded Bluetooth host support for periodic advertisement and isochronous channels.Added a new TCP stack which improves network protocol testabilityIntroduced a new toolchain abstraction with initial support for GCC and LLVM/ClangMoved to using C99 integer types and deprecate Zephyr integer typesIntroduced support for the SPARC architecture and the LEON implementationAdded Thread Local Storage (TLS) supportAdded support for per-thread runtime statisticsAdded support for building with LLVM on X86Added new synchronization mechanisms using Condition VariablesAdd support for demand paging, initial support on X86Logging subsystem overhauledAdded support for 64-bit ARCv3Split ARM32 and ARM64, ARM64 is now a top-level architectureAdded initial support for Arm v8.1-m and Cortex-M55Removed legacy TCP stack support which was deprecated in 2.4Tracing subsystem overhaul / added support for Percepio TracealyzerDevice runtime power management (PM) completely overhauledAutomatic SPDX SBOM generation has been added to WestAdded an example standalone Zephyr application

Areas to Improve

New technical features and enhancements are proposed every day. However, it’s also important to periodically step back and look at how efficiently our wheels are turning as an organization. At the request of our valued community members, several areas have been tagged for improvement.

We need more Collaborators and Maintainers (Reviewers) to match our growthMore reviewers mean less time in review for each PR; on averageSome Maintainers oversee multiple areas, giving them less time to focusWe want you! (if you have what it takes)Technical expertise, patience, time, and a good track record of contributingSee Project Roles for Maintainer responsibilitiesRecord and publish Zephyr commit statistics similar to the Linux kernelUse a finer granularity of permissions on GitHub (currently in progress)Provide a qualification process and Rolodex of Zephyr consultants

Looking to the Future

There are currently 107 RFC tickets open for virtually every kind of enhancement. Below are just a few that I am personally quite excited about!

native_posix board support for macOSA sensor and message-bus framework (based on Android’s CHRE)A generic State Machine FrameworkAddition of a Pin Control API and Devicetree bindingsA USB-C Driver Framework (based on the ChromeOS stack)A unified framework for multiple clock sources, domains, and timer resolutionsMultiple network interface auto-configuration via DevicetreeImproved support for multiple radio devices and wireless coexistenceImproved Language and Runtime Support: MicroPython, C++, Rust, eBPFImproved support for ISO C, C++, and POSIX standardsAdditional support for Remote Procedure Call frameworks like gRPC and Thrift

Of course, one of the greatest facets of Zephyr’s future is the community, and we welcome all of our future community members with open arms. For those new to Zephyr, the best place to begin is the Zephyr Getting Started Guide. At any time, please feel free to reach out to us on Discord to chat.

Closing Remarks

Every second of every day, millions of Zephyr-based Internet-enabled devices wake up, process a few bytes of data, resonate at GHz frequencies, and then quietly go back to sleep, consuming precious micro-amps of battery power. While others, at the opposite end, never get to sleep at all and process immense payloads in custom hardware accelerators in some of the world’s largest data centers.

This is our community. We scale. We solve categorically hard problems. We hold each other to high standards. We help one another through thick and thin, and in doing so, we are able to achieve the most incredible things!

We’re excited to announce the release of Zephyr LTS V2. And to our community, I say thank you!

These efforts are made possible by the dozens of enterprises that support the Zephyr project. To learn how your organization can get involved, click here

The post In Case You Missed It: Zephyr LTS V2 Release appeared first on Linux Foundation.

Open source software tools and services are often created quickly and out of necessity. Linus Torvalds, for example, created the first version of git in a weekend when the Linux kernel team could no longer use BitKeeper for Source Control Management. 

sigstore was created earlier this year to address the massive gap for an easy, trustable and efficient digital signing tool to confirm the provenance (origin) of software. Since March 2021 sigstore has been growing rapidly and is being used for various projects. This includes Kubernetes, one of the world’s largest open source projects.

But like Let’s Encrypt and the Linux Kernel, sigstore requires resources. Building the first version of the tool is different from bringing together resources to enable widespread adoption and support it for the long term. That’s why we’re excited to announce today that the project has received generous contributions from Chainguard, Cisco, HPE, Google, Red Hat and VMware to conduct an extensive security audit and hire a full-time developer relations engineer. 

The reality is that today the majority of software isn’t digitally signed. Without signatures, there’s little evidence of the software’s provenance,  so most software consumed is cryptographically untrusted. With sigstore, developers can digitally sign containers, artifacts, config-as-code, policy, and any given computer file. sigstore has the potential of becoming to digital signing what Let’s Encrypt is to HTTPS. 

“By working to eliminate the requirements for specialized skills in cryptography, sigstore is committed to establishing trust and transparency in the open source supply chain. Removing this exclusivity is key to increasing developers’ access to cryptographic signing and creating an open log for accountability. Red Hat is proud to support sigstore’s constant commitment to open source in the supply chain security space,” said Luke Hinds, Senior Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat.

For more information about sigstore, please visit: https://blog.sigstore.dev/

The post sigstore, the free digital signing service for open source supply chain security, gets additional support appeared first on Linux Foundation.

More than 40 companies commit to build open source ecosystem to enable next-generation architectures for microservices use cases

Napa Valley, Calif., Linux Foundation Membership Summit, November 2, 2021 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the NextArch Foundation. The new Foundation is a neutral home for open source developers and contributors to build next-generation architecture that can support compatibility between an increasing array of microservices.

Cloud-native computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), Edge computing and much more have led businesses down a path of massive opportunity and transformation. According to market research, the global digital transformation market size was valued at USD 336.14 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.6 percent from 2021 to 2028. But a lack of intelligent, centralized architecture is preventing enterprises and the developers who are creating innovation based on these technologies to fully realize their potential.

“Developers today have to make what feel like impossible decisions among different technical infrastructures and the proper tool for a variety of problems,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. “Every tool brings learning costs and complexities that developers don’t have the time to navigate yet there’s the expectation that they keep up with accelerated development and innovation. NextArch Foundation will improve ease of use and reduce the cost for developers to drive the evolution of next-generation technology architectures.”

Next-generation architecture describes a variety of innovations in architecture, from data storage and heterogeneous hardware to engineering productivity, telecommunications and much more. Until now, there has been no ecosystem to address this massive challenge. NextArch will leverage infrastructure abstraction solutions through architecture and design and automate development, operations and project processes to increase the autonomy of development teams. Enterprises will gain easy to use and cost-effective tools to solve the problems of productization and commercialization in their digital transformation journey.

“NextArch Foundation understands that solving the biggest technology challenges of our time requires building an open source ecosystem and fostering collaboration,” said Mike Dolan, senior vice president and general manager of projects at Linux Foundation. “This is an important effort with a big mission and it can only be done in the open source community. We are happy to support this community and help build open governance practices that benefit developers throughout its ecosystem.”

“I am really excited to be involved with the NextArch Foundation in an advisory role. In the past five years, we’ve witnessed major advances in various technology domains such as cloud, artificial intelligence, IoT, AR/VR, quantum computing, serverless computing, and many more. These advances have produced enormous amounts of open source software assets. A core challenge is bridging all these technologies and software assets under a single next generation architecture that supports diverse computing environments and enables enterprise digital transformation. NextArch Foundation will be at the heart of this effort, building a community and enabling an ecosystem that brings together organizations and communities to address this challenge in an open environment,” said Dr. Ibrahim Haddad, Executive Director of LF AI & Data.

For more information about the NextArch Foundation or to contribute, please visit: nextarch.io

Supporting Comments

Aftership

“Congratulations on launching the NextArch Foundation! By being part of the NextArch Foundation, AfterShip hopes to build a next-generation technical architecture to better serve customers around the world,” said Xiaojun Hong, CTO of AfterShip.

Agora

“It is a great honor to be part of the NextArch Foundation and celebrate its launch! In recent years, we have continuously explored and practiced next-generation architecture technologies in the audio and video field, and have paid more attention to open source contributions. I am very pleased to see that NextArch Foundation has allowed open source architecture projects to have a platform for comprehensive development. I hope more developers can participate and jointly build a better and more open next-generation architecture open source ecosystem,” said Yue Feng, Co-founder & Technical VP of Agora.

Alauda

“The rise of cloud native technologies is shaping the future of enterprise IT. The plethora of technological innovations and architectural advancements are forming the basis of digitization strategies for modern organizations. We are delighted to see the formation of the NextArch Foundation. We believe it will foster a vibrant ecosystem of technologies, systems and processes that will help define the next generation of enterprise architecture. We look forward to contributing to this mission,” said Kai Chen, Co-founder & CTO of Alauda.

Ampere

 “Ampere is excited to participate in the launch of the NextArch Foundation, building upon the momentum started by the TARS Foundation, by collaborating and developing both technology and standards for the next generation of microservices,” said Mauri Whalen, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Ampere.

API7

“Congratulations on the launch of NextArch Foundation! I hope that with the support of the NextArch Foundation, more open source projects will continue to develop, build an active open source community, and create a prosperous open source ecosystem. At the same time, NextArch Foundation will help enterprises find architectural solutions faster, which will make great progress to the underlying infrastructure,” said Ming Wen, CEO of API7.

Arm

“As member of the Linux Foundation and the TARS Foundation, Arm is pleased to see the establishment of a neutral and non-profit NextArch Foundation that will help integrate upstream and downstream open-source technology resources, supporting the growth of heterogeneous SoCs for computing infrastructure,” said Frank Zou, VP of China GTM, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm.

Baidu

“Congratulations on the launch of NextArch Foundation! Together with the NextArch Foundation, we hope to realize the technological revolution of the future-oriented next-generation microservices architecture and accelerate the cloud-native transformation of enterprise architecture,” said Ran Zheng, Outstanding R&D Architect of Baidu.

CAICT

“Congratulations to the establishment of NextArch Foundation! As an inevitable trend of enterprise, digital transformation has spawned numerous tools and tech, which impose challenges on developers when they need to utilize new tech. Under the current environment, we are glad to see NextArch Foundation working on the evolution of next-generation architect or to mitigate pressure on developers,” said Yili Chen, director of cloud computing research dept. CAICT.

CESI

“The next-generation architecture is the future development trend. The China Electronics Engineering Design Institute has always actively participated in and promoted the exploration of cutting-edge technologies. As early as 2019, it led the writing of the “Next Generation Cloud Computing White Paper” in conjunction with China’s leading cloud computing companies. Personally, I am glad to be able to launch the NextArch Foundation together with the Linux Foundation this time. In the future, we will jointly explore technology research, standards, evaluation, and industrialization services,” said Liyun Yang, Director of the Cloud Computing Research Office.

Coredge.io

“We are extremely delighted to be part of the NextArch Foundation initiative. This is a great initiative to take the software services delivery to next level and we assure our active contribution to growth of each and every aspect of NextArch Foundation and future innovations,” said Sagar Nangare, Coredge.io Director of Product Marketing and Growth.

DataCanvas

“It’s a great pleasure to be part of the effort to launch the NextArch Foundation. With fast rising demand from data science and real-time applications, it’s a defining moment of software architectural change in the coming decade. Millions of businesses are making decisions every day to upgrade their IT architecture to handle the sheer size workload during digital transformation, it’s still an uncertain process lacking a clear paradigm and guidance. We are very happy to see NextArch can stand up and unite leading organizations to face this challenge. NextArch will surely be an innovation center to help across the world and we are looking forward to engaging as an initial member,” said Lei Fang, Board Chairman of DataCanvas.

DCloud

“Congratulations on the creation of NextArch Foundation! I hope that NextArch Foundation can incubate more outstanding, open source cloud-native projects and help more companies accelerate their digital transformation,” said Hongbao Cui, CTO of DCloud.

DiDi

“Congratulations on the creation of the NextArch Foundation! We hope that the NextArch Foundation can help more users find solutions to the development of architecture in the current open source software and hardware more quickly, which will contribute enormous value to the open source community,” said Yi Yang, Open Source Committee Chair of DiDi.

Digital China

“Congratulations on the launch of NextArch Foundation and look forward to the cooperation with NextArch Foundation. We believe that can provide better services and solutions for the open-source ecological construction of customer introduction, channel expansion, technology and product innovation, technology accumulation, etc., and to accelerate the realization of the value of open-source technology in the client,” said Yang Shen, Vice President & CIO of Digital China Group.

Eolink

“Congratulations on the launch of NextArch Foundation! As a firm supporter of the API economy, Eolink sees the great value that API can provide for various technical architectures in the past and the foreseeable future. I hope that NextArch Foundation can help us quickly find the current best practices for open source software development. Together, we hope to help implement open source software and hardware in different fields by integrating with API economy,” said Haozhen Liu, CEO of Eolink.

GrowingIO

“Congratulations to the NextArch Foundation! We hope to contribute to the development of the open source ecosystem and open source trends with NextArch Foundation and other partners in the future. We believe participating in NextArch will cultivate open cooperation and empower decision-making processes,” said Dingding Ye, CTO of GrowingIO.

HarmonyCloud

“On behalf of HarmonyCloud, I would like to congratulate the launch of NextArch Foundation. In the future, we will jointly explore the best solution for the development of open source software and hardware architecture, and I look forward to creating more possibilities with the help of NextArch Foundation,” said Aoyu Wang, CEO of HarmonyCloud.

Huayou Tech

“In recent years, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the support from cloud native, container, DevOps, microservices and other technologies has pushed forward digital transformation. In the face of a digital age, architecture technology will inevitably be upgraded, and the next generation of architecture technology will also emerge. The establishment of NextArch Foundation is in line with the trend and will surely lead the trend. Congratulations on the launch of NextArch Foundation!” said Tianguo Xiao, Co-founder & CEO of Huayou Tech.

JD

“We are honored to witness the birth of a legend. Congratulations on the launch of NextArch Foundation! As a company with a technological belief, we are in an unprecedented wave of technological change. We always believe that in the continuous evolution of the next-generation technology architecture, developer productivity engineering (DPE) and developer experience engineering (DXE) will become the mainstream consensus of the industry. Together with the open-source spirit, it will act as the source of power to develop future technical efficiency. I am delighted that this coincides with the vision of NextArch Foundation. We hope to work with NextArch Foundation to uphold the original intention of technology to change the world and jointly promote the implementation of enterprise digital transformation and the arrival of the data-driven intelligent era,” said Xuefeng Shi, Engineering Efficiency Expert of JD.

JiHu (GitLab)

“Congratulations on the establishment of the NextArch Foundation. JiHu (GitLab) is committed to promoting DevOps and the development of open source ecology based on the principle of core openness, which coincides with the philosophy of the NextArch Foundation. We hope that NextArch Foundation can flourish and JiHu (GitLab) will contribute its own strength,” said Sam Chen, CEO of JiHu (GitLab).

Kong

“Kong is proud to be part of this momentous launch of the NextArch Foundation. Multi-cloud is the future, and it’s exciting to see such a great set of collaborators coming together to make heterogeneous infrastructure more accessible to development teams,” said Michael Heap, Director of Developer Relations at Kong.

Mulan Community

“With the advent of the distributed cloud era, computing, storage, and data technologies must go through innovations. It is critical to have a forward-looking perspective of the next-generation technology architecture. Open source is the best way to promote technological development and the industrial ecosystem. Mulan Community is excited to work with the Linux Foundation to advance technological and industrial transformation and development,” said Hang Geng, Community Manager of Mulan Community.

Nanjing University

“Architecture determines value, and decentralization is the future. Overcoming the limitations of the next-generation software architecture and adapting to the architectural needs of the cloud era will help the development of the digital economy. As the first Chinese academic institution dedicated to comprehensive research, teaching and industrial cooperation between DevOps and cloud native, DevOps+ Research Laboratory of Nanjing University is willing to work with the Linux Foundation to explore the next generation of cloud native architecture and promote technological change,” said Zhang He, Director of DevOps+ Research Laboratory of Nanjing University.

OneFlow

“Congratulations on the launch of the NextArch Foundation! It is my great honor to witness the birth of such profound an effort. In the particular field of deep learning, we believe that only next generation architecture can address the unprecedented challenges of big data, and big computing. Furthermore, only through collaboration with the open source community can such next generation technology be developed. Looking forward to working together with NextArch foundation in the future,” said Jinhui Yuan, Founder of OneFlow Inc.

Ramanujan College, University of Delhi

“It is a great opportunity for Ramanujan College, University of Delhi to join as a member of the NextArch Foundation and participate in the open-source projects and the technical community. We are happy to be a part of this ecosystem,” said Vipin Rathi, Asst. Professor, Chairperson Hyperledger Telecom SIG.

SphereEx

“We are excited to see how many open source projects for enterprise digital transformation will develop with the help of the NextArch Foundation. SphereEx will continue to maintain a cooperative relationship with NextArch Foundation, realize the open source and open management concepts, and strive to build a new generation of technology architecture ecosystem with global collaboration,” said Liang Zhang, Co-founder and CEO of SphereEx.

SRS

“Congratulations! Tech changes the world, open source changes the tech. As one of video and live streaming open source projects, SRS makes it easy to build video platforms. There are lots of open source projects like FFmpeg, WebRTC, x264, libopus, gstreamer, SRS, etc, enabling the video developer to build large scale video products, for entertainment, online meeting, education, communication and cloud games,” said Winlin, Maintainer of SRS.

Stream Native

“Nowadays, the open source ecosystem is becoming more comprehensive, and the digital transformation of enterprises is the current trend. To meet the needs of today and the future, we should face the heterogeneous infrastructure and multi-cloud scenarios to jointly discuss the next-generation technical architecture. StreamNative is honored to participate in the NextArch Foundation and hopes that the Foundation will help more companies find solutions that meet the development of new open source software, hardware and software architectures, and help the industry’s digital transformation,” said Jia Zhai, Co-founder of StreamNative.

Swoole

“Congratulations on the creation of the NextArch Foundation! We look forward to the open source software solutions provided by the NextArch Foundation to help Chinese companies build a stable and reliable software service architecture, effectively improving R&D efficiency and reducing costs for companies,” said Tianfeng Han, CEO of Swoole.

TAL

“Congratulations on the launch of the NextArch Foundation. We hope that NextArch Foundation will connect different technology companies, like TAL, to create and build open source software and hardware technology and promote open source business development. The collaboration from NextArch will encourage the development of IT technology through open source and technological innovation!” said Mi Tian, CTO of TAL.

Tapdata

“NextArch Foundation is a very creative foundation. Today, open source software has become the mainstream, effectively combining excellent open source software to form an organic collaboration architecture that can provide more direct technical value for the overall solution of the enterprise. As a technical product focusing on the real-time data service track (Real Time DaaS), Tapdata will also actively embrace open source and contribute to the NextArch Foundation,” said Chairman of Tapdata Founder & CEO, MongoDB Chinese Community, Tang Jianfa.

Tencent

“Tencent is excited to join the NextArch Foundation, which focuses on next-generation technology architecture and future open source innovation under the Linux Foundation. It is clear that technological innovation worldwide has accelerated, thus requiring better heterogeneous and multi-cloud infrastructure. We hope to actively participate in the development of next generation architecture. Through the NextArch Foundation, we are confident to help more enterprises and industries to build the next-generation architecture optimal for business growth and a more comprehensive open source ecosystem,” said Mark Shan, Chairman of Tencent Open Source Alliance.

Tongcheng-Elong

“Congratulations on the launch of NextArch Foundation. I am honored to be a member of NextArch Foundation. With the continuous progress of technological innovation, it is an inevitable trend to develop the next-generation architectures. I hope that, with the support of NextArch Foundation, more and more developers will participate and work together to build a better next-generation open source ecosystem,” said Xiaobo Wang, CTO of LY.com.

VMware

“Congratulations on launching the NextArch Foundation! The mission and goals of NextArch Foundation are well aligned with our effort in OSS projects in areas such as cloud native for modern apps, blockchain, distributed edge/IoT, heterogeneous compute/storage/network and AI/ML accelerators. Look forward to more collaboration with the NextArch Foundation,” said Alan Ren, General Manager of VMware R&D China.

Unicom Digital Tech

“Unicom Digital Tech is fortunate to witness the establishment of NextArch Foundation, and hope that this organization can effectively promote the healthy and robust development of the national software industry, increase the company’s technical strength, and feedback the transformation of basic software and hardware and benefit everyone, said” Qiang Feng, Unicom Digital Tech.

Xiaomi

“Congratulations on the establishment of NextArch Foundation! I hope NextArch Foundation can help us find solutions to the development of hybrid cloud architecture more quickly, and help us develop the open source ecosystem suitable for the digital transformation of Xiaomi,” said Zuoyan Qin, Chairman of Xiaomi Open Source Committee.

XILE

“Congratulations on the launch of the NextArch Foundation! We hope that NextArch Foundation can lead us to release greater computing power, establish more efficient connections, and provide more secure services. Let’s build the next-generation internet together!” said Yu Cao, co-founder of XILE.

XSKY

“With the establishment of NextArch Foundation, next generation architecture is opening a new era in global development. Together with other members, XSKY will spare no effort to push forward the construction of a broader ecosystem. We aim to achieve a landing storage approach of high-availability and high-reliability for users with emerging architecture,” said Haomai Wang, CTO of XSKY.

Yashi

“Congratulations on the creation of NextArch Foundation! The open source movement requires more companies and individuals to participate extensively. Yashi looks forward to working with NextArch Foundation and contributing to the open source software architecture solutions,” said Qiangning Hong, CTO of Yashi.

YeePay

“Congratulations to the NextArch foundation! We hope to help YeePay build a strong digital trading service platform to serve global merchants through Inclusive and advanced technology,” said Wanlong Lu, Director of YeePay.

YunJi Tech

“The establishment of NextArch Foundation is a landmark event, which means that the industry unites and considers the future of converged infrastructure and digital transformation. Fortunately to be a TOC member, congratulations to NextArch,” said Wei Lou (Jet), Tech VP of Yunji Tech.

Zenlayer

“Companies increasingly require services that support their heterogeneous, resource-intensive edge deployments. Zenlayer is fully aligned with the NextArch Foundation’s vision of improving heterogeneous infrastructure design. The company enables the dynamic deployment of microservices between public and edge clouds, and among edge locations. This groundbreaking approach makes it easy to access critical resources on-demand, and from any location. Zenlayer is proud to be a founding member of the NextArch Foundation, and is committed to building the next generation of edge cloud,” said Joe Zhu, Zenlayer CEO and Founder.

360

“It is a great honor for 360 to join the NextArch Foundation, which focuses on next-generation architecture and future open source innovation within the Linux Foundation. With the further acceleration of global technological development and transformation, enterprise level hybrid cloud and multi-cloud heterogeneity will become the trend of infrastructure technology development. We see joining the NextArch Foundation as an opportunity to actively participate in the technological transformation of the next-generation architecture, jointly promote the evolution of the next-generation architecture technology. We look forward to promoting the sustainable development of the open source ecosystem along with other members,” said Wang Feng, Head of Basic Cloud Architecture, 360.

4Paradigm

“Congratulations! Glad to see the creation of NextArch Foundation. NextArch provides great initiative to inspire developers and contributors building outstanding architecture solutions. 4Paradigm looks forward to sharing architecture ideas based on Enterprise AI transformation experience, and contributing open source solutions to the NextArch community!”  said Zhao Zheng, VP of Engineering, 4Paradigm.

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation and its projects are supported by more than 1,800 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, Hyperledger, RISC-V 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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