Wants to integrate open source software in their products

Sep 26, 2017 20:49 GMT  ·  By

The Open Source Initiative announced on Tuesday that Microsoft had recently become Premium Sponsor of OSI, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting Open Source software.

OSI's main goal is to promote open source technologies and software projects through education and collaboration, as well as through infrastructure. Without organizations like Open Source Initiative, the entire Open Source movement would have no chance to be a success and evolve to become a first-class citizen in the software industry where proprietary is still winning. And now, Microsoft joins OSI in an effort to promote Open Source software even further.

"This is a significant milestone for the OSI and the open source software movement more broadly," said Patrick Masson, OSI General Manager and Board Director. "I don't think there could be any greater testament to the maturity, viability, interest, and success of open source software than not only Microsoft's recognition, but also their support as a sponsor, as well as their participation as contributors to so many open source projects and communities."

Microsoft is a leading contributor to Open Source software projects

According to OSI, Microsoft is a leading contributor to Open Source software projects hosted on the popular GitHub development platform, web-based version control repository, and code hosting service. Its contributions to the Open Source community are well-known, including collaborations with Canonical on a custom Ubuntu kernel for Azure, as well as the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Bash on Ubuntu on Windows.

Microsoft is also known to have collaborated with Red Hat and SUSE on various projects, as well as with Linux Foundation, and it worked with FreeBSD Foundation as well, which is an OSI Affiliate Member, to support their FreeBSD operating system on the company's Azure cloud computing platform. By joining the Open Source Initiative, Microsoft wants to integrate more Open Source software on its products.